Memories.  :   /   By 

Lord^Redesdale,  G.C.V.O.,  K.C.B. 

With    two    photogravure    plates    and    16    other    illustrations 


r      l\e.J**J»l&j    fillet-Hen 


^ 


VOL.  I 


P.    BUTTON  AND  COMPANY 
681,  FIFTH  AVENUE 

'.  }  •> 


Printed  in  Great  Britain 


To  MY  WIFE  AND  CHILDREN 

FOR  WHOM  THESE 

MEMORIES  OF  MANY  YEARS  HAVE  BEEN  RECORDED 
!I   DEDICATE  MY  BOOK 


PREFACE 

Now  that  the  midnight  of  life  is  at  hand,  before  the  last  chime  oi 
the  curfew  must  ring  out,  I  have  been  busying  myself  in  writing  down 
memories  of  the  people  who  brightened  its  morning,  its  noon  and 
its  evening.  It  was  my  fate  long  ago  to  be  associated  with  men 
older,  sometimes  much  older,  than  myself,  and  so  it  happens  that 
few  indeed  of  the  friends  of  my  early  manhood  are  now  left.  Except 
where  it  is  absolutely  necessary  in  order  to  tell  the  rest  of  my  tale, 
I  have  not  dealt  with  the  living.  To  praise  them  might  seem 
sycophantic,  to  blame  them  an  impertinence.  It  would  be  over- 
bold in  me  to  write  a  chronicle  of  my  own  days  were  I  not  able 
to  say  with  Horace  : 

"  tamen  me 

Cum  magnis  vixisse  invita  fatebitur  usque 
Invidia." 

My  life,  indeed,  has  been  largely  spent  amongst  men  who  in 
many  lands  have  made  the  history  of  their  time.  The  story  of 
their  public  achievements  is,  or  will  be,  written  in  the  annals  of 
their  countries.  The  story  of  their  private  lives  is  often  unknown 
to,  and  therefore  put  on  one  side  by,  their  biographers.  To  rescue 
from  oblivion  here  and  there  some  intimate  feature,  some  petty 
detail  which  may  help  to  make  known  the  real  personalities  of 
such  men — perhaps  to  remove  a  wrong  impression — is  the  humble 
object  of  this  book,  and  it  is  to  the  shades  of  those  who  did  so 
much  for  me  that  I  offer  it  as  a  grateful  tribute. 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

VOL.   I 

THE  AUTHOR  (photogravure)    ....          ,  Frontispiece 

Photograph  by  Furley  Lewis,  Esq. 
PORTRAIT  IN  MEMORY  OF  BERTRAM  ASHBURNHAM    .         .Facing page 

From  Gwillim's  Heraldry. 
THE  Rums  OF  MITFORD  CASTLE „  4 

From  a  drawing,  dated  August,  1769,  by  J.  Mitford  (Lord 

Redesdale). 
WILLIAM  MITFORD „        „          14 

From  an  oil  painting  by  John  Jackson,  R.A. 
THE  ASHBURNHAM  FAMILY     ......„„          26 

EDWARD  CRAVEN  HAWTREY,  D.D.,  ETON  COLLEGE  .     „        „  53 

A  sketch  by  a  sixth  form  boy. 
FIRE-PLACE  IN  EVANS'  HOUSE         .....„„          64 

From  a  water-colour  sketch  by  W.  Evans. 
MARIO „         „         192 

By  Lord  Leighton,  P. R.A. 
EMBASSY  HOUSE,  ST.  PETERSBURG  .         .         .         .     „        „        206 

From  a  water-colour  drawing  by  Charlemagne,  1864. 

THE  DEAD  EMPEROR  NICHOLAS  I.  ....,,„        252 

THE  EMPEROR  ALEXANDER  II.        .         .         .         .         .     „        „        264 

From  a  sketch  by  Zichy. 
THE  EMPEROR  ALEXANDER  II „        „        272 

From  a  sketch  by  Zichy. 


MEMORIES 

CHAPTER    I 

THE    CRADLE    AND    THE    RACE 

Nam  genus  et  proavos  et  quae  non  fecimus  ipsi, 
Vix  ea  nostra  voco. 

OF  course  it  was  not  good  taste  in  Ajax  to  brag  so  loudly  of 
being  the  great-grandson  of  Jupiter,  but  then  Ulysses  need 
not  have  snubbed  him  so  fiercely,  and  then  gone  on  to  show  how 
he,  too,  was  god-born,  but  on  the  mother's  side  as  well  as  on  the 
father's.  Nor  was  it  quite  consistent  in  Ovid,  who  struggled  so 
proudly  for  his  privileges  as  eques  in  the  theatre,  to  clothe  these 
Socialist  sentiments  in  a  pair  of  hexameter  lines  ;  but  then.,  in 
spite  of  that  little  flirtation  with  a  naughty  Princess,  which  caused 
his  banishment,  Ovid  was  a  Radical  and  a  poet,  which  gave  him  a 
double  claim  to  inconsistency. 

The  sentiment  is,  as  it  seems  to  me,  utterly  false  and  untrue  to 
the  very  nature  of  man.  From  the  earliest  times,  and  even  in  the 
most  savage  races,  men  have  been  proud  of  such  ancestry  as  they 
could  lay  claim  to,  and  many  a  poor  peasant  loves  to  tell  you  that 
he  is  living  in  the  cottage  that  his  forebears  have  held  for  generations. 
Pride  of  Race  and  Pride  of  Country  go  hand-in-hand  as  two  forms 
of  Patriotism. 

In  1862  poor  Laurence  Oliphant  and  I — he,  the  most  charming 
of  companions,  just  beginning  to  be  bitten  by  mysticism — were 
travelling  together  on  the  Continent.  He  was  still  suffering 
from  the  cruel  wounds  which  he  received  in  the  night  attack 

VOL.    I  I 


2  Memories 

by  Ronins  on  the  Legation  at  Yedo  in  1861.  He  had  been 
ordered  to  drink  the  iron  waters  of  Spa,  and  I  agreed  to  go  with 
him  for  my  summer  holiday.  The  first  evening  at  the  table 
d'hote  dinner,  I  sat  next  to  a  very  agreeable  gentleman  with 
whom  I  speedily  made  friends.  After  about  half  an  hour's  talk 
he  asked  my  name.  I  told  him  who  I  was.  "  Dear  me,"  he  said, 
"  if  you  are  the  son  of  Mr.  Mitford  of  Exbury  and  Lady  Georgina 
Ashburnham,  you  are  descended  from  perhaps  the  two  oldest 
Saxon  families  in  England.  Sir,  you  are  a  very  remarkable 
person."  I  felt  as  Whistler,  in  his  quaint  way,  told  me  that  he 
did  when  Carlyle  used  the  same  words  to  him,  "  That  that  was 
about  what  was  the  matter  with  me  !  "  and  when  I  asked  who  was 
my  genealogical  acquaintance,  he  turned  out  to  be  no  less  an 
authority  than  Sir  Bernard  Burke. 

But  in  matter  of  genealogy,  as  in  all  others,  there  are  iconoclasts, 
and  now  come  people  of  much  learning,  who  declare  that  the  Saxon 
Mitfords  are  really  Norman  Bertrams,  and  that  the  famous  Ash- 
burnhams,  "  of  stupendous  antiquity,"  are  the  descendants  of  a 
Norman  family  who  were  Counts  of  Eu — in  Domesday  Book 
variously  called  Estriels,  Escriol,  Criol,  Crieul,  or  Anglicized  as 
Kiriell,  and  even  Cruel.  That  after  all  these  centuries,  and  after 
such  countless  marriages  as  must  have  taken  place  in  them,  so 
curious  an  animal  as  a  man  of  pure  Saxon  blood.,  or,  indeed,  of  any 
pure  blood,  should  still  be  in  existence  is,  of  course,  an  impossi- 
bility. It  may  be  rank  nonsense  to  talk  of  the  Mitfords  and  the 
Ashburnhams  as  two  of  the  oldest  Saxon  families  in  England, 
when  there  can  be  no  such  families,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  they  are  both  of  very  great  antiquity. 

Of  the  Ashburnhams  old  Fuller  says,  "  My  poor  and  plaine  pen 
is  willing  though  unable  to  add  any  lustre  to  this  family  of  stu- 
pendous antiquitie."  According  to  Francis  Thynne,  a  herald  of 
Queen  Elizabeth's  time,  "  Bertram  Ashburnham,  a  Baron  of  Kent, 
was  Constable  of  Dover  Castle  in  1066  ;  which  Bertram  was  be- 
headed by  William  the  Conqueror  because  he  did  so  valiantly 
defend  the  same  against  the  Duke  of  Normandy."  This  is  quoted 
by  the  Duchess  of  Cleveland  in  her  "  Battle  Abbey  Roll,"  and  she 
then  labours  with  all  her  might  to  demolish  the  whole  story. 


lilts  Portnaturf  is    i/i  mtuaru  of  Bertram. 
vko  in.  t!it  fym/  of  Kmq  ffaiylS  wan  _x-\ 
of  Dn'tr  an}  Skenf  af  the  JMI?  Cctiny. 
at  the  Loafing  tf  William  rite  Cangaenr,K.ing 
tamaLttter  to  faisr  nil  tiie  force  un?er~> 
vfunthe  fuy  cant,  vy  a  oppzst  y  C  enquirer, 
r?nutn?  m  the  l&attie)  reua'fd  fat  manq  -^-' 
.tn?/mft  vkichOfmcfyiivucih  the  mercy  sf 


aitr/iiue  continue?  at&hturiiham.  afaresou? 


JsUurntium  of  Ajhburiiham  in. 
Warden  of  The  Cwufnepo 
ad  bttng  a.  person  tnjje  great  power  —  *~ 
Haral2  fytu  was.  then  m  the  JNariKjkia.  ^-^ 
his  Comttrtf  ts  withftim?  the  InvadotAnd 
the  Jaid  Bcrtramfitthi'  ht&  an  tmment  -^^_ 
'Jtnmls  that  faan  aftrr  ht  i\{ti  thtretf-  — 
afire  a  m  ak  hne)  have 


L  arc  tiu  frtfent  pafrffrarr  thcrtsf. 


PORTRAIT   IN    MEMORY   OF   BERTRAM   ASHBURNHAM.    LORD   WARDEN 
OF  THE   CINQUE   PORTS  IN   KING   HAROLD'S  TIME. 

From  Gwillim's  Heraldry. 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race 


Gwillim's  "  Heraldry,"  however,  takes  the  other  view,  and  makes 
out  that  the  second  holder  of  the  office  of  Lord  Warden  of  the 
Cinque  Ports  was  this  same  Bertram  Ashburnham,  and  that  it  was 
he  who,  on  behalf  of  the  King,  raised  the  troops  to  resist  the  in- 
vasion, Harold  himself  being  away  engaged  hi  quelling  a  rebellion 
in  the  North.  "  Since  which  time  until  now,  by  the  grace  of  God, 
there  hath  not  been  wanting  an  Ashburnham  of  Ashburnham  in 
Sussex." 

Gwillim  has  a  curious  engraving  of  a  portrait  "  hi  memory  of  " 
this  hero  in  seventeenth-century  armour,  and  the  tradition  in  the 
family  is  that  it  was  John  Ashburnham,  King  Charles  the  First's 
gentleman,  who  sat  for  this  very  grim  effigy.  Then  there  is  another 
story,  for  which  I  know  not  the  authority,  if,  indeed,  there  be  any, 
to  the  effect  that  Bertram  Ashburnham  defended  the  Castle  so 
stoutly  that  William  made  terms  with  him  and  raised  the  siege, 
allowing  the  Saxon  to  name  his  own  conditions,  which  were  that 
he  and  his  men  should  leave  with  all  the 'honours  of  war,  and  that 
the  law  of  gavelkind  should  obtain  in  Kent  for  all  time.  This 
brave  tale,  I  am  afraid,  must  be  dismissed  as  moonshine. 

So  there  is  much  complication,  but  on  one  point  all  the  authorities 
are  agreed,  and  that  is  the  marriage  of  the  Norman  knight,  Bertram, 
with  the  Saxon  heiress  of  Mitford  ;  so  far  as  that  goes,  if  we  may 
not  call  ourselves  a  Saxon  family,  our  Saxon  descent  is  not  denied 
to  us. 

About  two  miles  to  the  west  of  Morpeth,  on  a  spot  romantic 
enough  to  inspire  a  poet's  dream,  fair  enough  for  a  painter  to  linger 
over  with  a  lover's  delight,  stand  the  ruins  of  the  old  Saxon  castle 
of  Mitford.  That  is  the  Cradle  of  our  Race.  The  keep,  battered 
by  storms  of  war  and  weather,  rises  on  a  rocky  eminence  to  the 
south  of  the  river  Wansbeck,*  close  to  the  point  where  the  two 
fords  of  the  Wansbeck  and  the  Font  meet.  It  was  fiom  this  meeting 
that  the  Castle  and  village  took  their  name.f  just  as  Coblenz 
did  from  the  confluenticf-  of  Rhine  and  Moselle.  The  rivers  of 

*  The  name  Wansbeck  is  derived  from  "  want,"  the  old  English  word  for 
a  mole  :   the  beck  or  stream  of  the  mole.     The  word,  by  the  by,  is  still  alive 
in  Gloucestershire,  where  a  molehill  is  an  "  unt-yeave." 
f  Midfordr=between  the  fords. 

VOL.   I  I* 


4  Memories 

Northumberland,  tearing  their  way  through  the  rocks,  between 
banks  fringed  with  the  most  picturesque  vegetation,  overhanging 
trees,  shrubs,  ferns,  docks,  and  all  the  fairy-like  greenery  which  they 
wear  with  such  grace,  are  the  glory  of  that  part  of  the  country.  Such 
streams  as  the  Wansbeck  and  the  Coquet  are  a  haunting  memory. 

Not  even  the  most  audaciously  inventive  of  antiquaries  has, 
so  far  as  I  know,  been  brave  enough  to  fix  the  date  of  the  Castle's 
building  ;  all  that  can  be  said  is  that  it  is  very  old.  Burke,  on 
the  authority  of  the  "  Durham  Booke,"  tells  the  story  how  a  certain 
"  Robert  Mitford,  Esq.,  carried  an  old  writeing  to  produce  at 
Durham  upon  some  occasion,  by  wch  one  of  ye  ancestors  of  Mit- 
fords,  of  Mitford,  in  ye  time  of  K.  Edwd.  ye  Confessor,  did  assure 
his  wife's  joynture  out  of  Lands  in  Mitford,  wch  writeing  Sir  Joseph 
Craddock  saw  and  attests  it  under  the  hand  but  is  since  embezzled 
and  lost."  That,  since  the  document  is  lost,  is  but  a  weak  foun- 
dation upon  which  to  base  a  belief.  The  tale,  however,  must  be 
true,  for  William  the  Conqueror's  advent  followed  almost  imme- 
diately upon  the  death  of  King  Edward,  and  that  the  Castle  was 
at  the  time  of  the  Conquest  in  the  possession  of  Sir  John  de  Mitford 
is  a  fact.  Beyond  that  time  we  must  be  content  to  leave  the 
family  history  lost  in  the  clouds. 

Even  so,  the  story  is  old  enough,  and  we  may  well  be  proud 
of  our  old  cousin  Edward  Mitford,  the  head  of  the  family,  who 
fulfilled  more  than  his  century  of  life  in  1911,  and  died  on  the 
property  and  in  sight  of  the  ruined  Castle  which  belonged  to  our 
ancestors  some  nine  hundred  years  ago. 

Among  the  knights  who  fought  at  Hastings  in  the  tram  of  William 
the  Conqueror  were  two  brothers,  Sir  Robert*  and  Sir  William 
Bertram.  "  Robert  Bertram  ki  estoit  tort  "  (crooked)  was  Lord 
of  Briquebec,  near  Valognes,  a  barony  consisting  of  forty  knights' 
fees,  which  is  said  to  have  taken  its  name  from  Brico,  a  Norwegian 
Viking,  who  was  the  ancestor  of  the  Bertram  family. f  It  was 
the  well-known  policy  of  the  Conqueror  to  pacify  England  and 

*  Sir  Robert  Bertram's  name  is  given  as  Richard  in  Burke's  "  Landed 
Gentry,"  where  it  is  further  said  that  he  was  a  son  of  the  Lord  of  Dignam 
in  Normandy. 

t  The  Duchess  of  Cleveland's  "  Battle  Abbey  Roll." 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race 


consolidate  his  power  by  promoting  or  even  making  up  marriages 
between  his  followers  and  the  Saxons  whom  they  had  conquered — 
especially  did  this  judicious  match-making  seem  to  be  desirable 
where  there  was  an  heiress  to  be  won.  At  the  time  of  the  Conquest, 
Sir  John  de  Mitford,  who  owned  the  Castle  and  Barony  of  Mitford, 
had  no  son.  His  only  daughter,  Sibella,  was  his  heiress,  and 
between  her  and  Sir  Robert  Bertram  a  marriage  was  arranged  and 
carried  into  effect. 

I  wonder  what  sort  of  a  home  it  made,  this  union  between  the 
Saxon  girl,  of  whom  I  like  to  believe  that  she  was  as  beautiful  as 
the  Lady  Rowena,  and  the  Norman  warrior  ?  Was  it  altogether 
a  manage  de  convenance  ?  Was  Sibella  forced  into  it,  or  might 
he  have  lighted  just  the  least  little  spark  of  love  in  her  breast  ? — 
and  when  once  they  were  married,  did  she  live  happily  with  her 
crooked  knight  ?  These  crook-backed  men  are  apt  to  have  very 
insinuating  ways  ;  we  all  know  how  Richard  the  Third,  when  he 
made  love  to  Lady  Anne,  so  flattered  and  coaxed  that  her 

woman's  heart 
Grossly  grew  captive  to  his  honey  words, 

and  in  my  early  diplomatic  days,  I  had  a  colleague  at  a  certain 
Embassy,  who,  though  crooked  as  Pope  himself,  was  declared  by 
all  women  to  be  irresistible.  How  grateful,  by  the  bye,  we  ought 
to  be  for  that  one  and  only  record  "  qui  estoit  tort,"  just  three 
words  which  give  to  the  old  story  of  Sibella  a  touch  perfectly  human 
and  real,  such  as  a  hundred  blazing  tales  of  deeds  of  derring-do, 
sung  by  minstrels  or  recorded  by  chroniclers,  could  never  have 
conveyed.  The  crook  must  have  been  true,  it  could  hardly  have 
been  invented.  Since  walls  have  ears,  what  a  pity  it  is  that  stones 
have  not  tongues  :  these  old  ruins  could  teach  us  so  much  about 
the  lives  that  they  harboured,  lessons  which  one  does  so  long 
to  learn. 

These  Bertrams  must  have  been  men  of  no  little  importance 
in  their  generations.  The  two  heroes  of  Hastings  evidently  made 
their  mark,  and  later  on  there  is  some  reason  to  suppose  that  one, 
at  any  rate,  of  the  family,  perhaps  more,  joined  in  one  or  other  of 
the  Crusades.  For  in  some  excavations  which  were  made  among 
he  ruins  of  the  Castle  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 


6  Memories 

the  workmen  came  upon  a  tiny  piece  of  that  serpentine  marble 
which  the  Crusaders  were  wont  to  bring  home  from  the  Holy  Land 
to  be  set  in  the  altars  of  their  chapels  ;  the  relic  was  found  on  the 
spot  where  the  chapel  is  supposed  to  have  stood.  As  should  beseem 
Crusaders,  the  Bertrams  were  good  and  loyal  servants  of  the 
Church  :  a  pious  Bertram  it  was  that  founded  or  endowed  the 
Augustine  Priory  of  Brinkbourne  in  the  reign  of  Henry  the  First. 

Sir  Roger  de  Bertram  joined  the  insurrection  of  the  Barons  against 
King  John,  and  it  cost  him  dear,  for  in  retaliation  his  castle  was 
seized  and  his  town  of  Mitford  destroyed  with  fire  and  sword  by 
the  savage  Flemish  hordes  who  then  devastated  Northumberland 
as  the  auxiliaries  of  the  King.*  In  the  year  1215,  then,  Mitford 
Castle  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Crown,  and  two  years  later  Alexander 
of  Scotland,  who  had  invaded  England  at  the  instigation  of  France, 
laid  siege  to  it  with  his  whole  army,  but  he  was  beaten  off,  and  went 
back  to  Scotland  none  the  richer  for  his  venture.  King  John 
granted  the  Castle  to  Philip  de  Ulcoves,  but  in  the  following  reign 
it  was  restored  to  the  Bertrams  by  Henry  the  Third. 

The  next  notable  Bertram  was  that  Sir  Roger  who,  with  other 
northern  Barons,  marched  into  Scotland  in  1258  to  rescue  the 
young  King  of  the  Scots,  Henry  the  Third's  son-in-law  ;  but  he 
got  into  trouble,  for  six  years  later  he  was  one  of  the  insurgents 
in  the  Barons'  War,  was  taken  prisoner  at  Northampton,  and 
the  Castle  and  Barony  were  once  more  forfeited  and  alienated 
from  his  descendants  for  four  hundred  years.  He  seems,  indeed, 
to  have  speedily  made  his  peace  with  the  King,  for  in  1264  he  was 
summoned  to  Parliament  as  Baron  Bertram — but  Mitford  knew 
him  no  more.f  This  Sir  Roger  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  who  had 
only  one  daughter,  and  the  Barony  fell  into  abeyance  between  the 
Fitzwilliams,  Darcys  and  Penulburys,  the  representatives  of  his 
three  sisters. 

The  learned  labours  of  antiquaries  and  pedigree-mongers  have 
so  confused  the  story  of  the  younger  branch  of  the  Bertrams,  the 
Lords  of  Bothal,  that  it  is  extremely  difficult,  if  not  impossible 
to  make  head  or  tail  of  their  several  statements.  It  is  the  moi" 

*  The  Duchess  of  Cleveland's  "  Battle  Abbey  Roll." 
t  "  Battle  Abbey  Roll  "  ut  supra. 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race 


provoking  in  that  it  is  from  them  that  we,  the  Mitfords  of  the 
present  day,  are  descended.  From  them  also  the  Dukes  of  Portland, 
through  a  maternal  ancestress,  have  inherited  Bothal  Castle. 

In  the  "  Battle  Abbey  Roll  "  of  the  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  it  is 
stated  that  William  de  Bertram,  who  founded  Brinkbourne  Priory, 
married  a  daughter  of  Guy  de  Baliol  by  whom  he  had  two  sons, 
Roger,  Baron  of  Mitford,  and  Richard,  the  ancestor  of  the  Lords  of 
Bothal,  who  held  that  Barony  by  the  service  of  three  knights' 
fees.  This  is,  I  believe,  the  more  probably  correct  story,  and  it 
comes  into  line  with  the  evidence  of  the  "  Newminster  Abbey 
Register  Booke,"  which  makes  the  inheritance  descend  to  the  Dukes 
of  Portland  from  the  Lady  Sibella,  wife  of  the  first  Lord  Bertram. 

That  Bothal  should  have  been  held  by  Sir  William  (sometimes 
called  Sir  Richard)  Bertram,  the  brother  of  the  first  Lord  Bertram, 
as  some  have  maintained,  is  worthy  of  no  credence.  Why  should 
an  important  portion  of  Sibella  de  Mitford's  property  have  gone  to 
her  husband's  younger  brother  ? 

Burke,  in  his  "  Landed  Gentry,"  anxious,  probably,  to  prove  a 
Saxon  descent  from  father  to  son,  appears  to  wipe  out  all  the 
Bertrams  in  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  makes 
Mitford  (the  town  or  village,  not  the  Castle  and  Barony,  which  were 
forfeited)  descend  to  Sir  John  de  Mitford,  tenth  in  succession  to 
Matthew,  the  younger  brother  of  the  Sir  John  who  was  the  father 
of  Sibella.  That  we  shall  see  is  quite  apocryphal,  for  when  the 
elder  branch  of  the  Bertrams  came  to  an  end  in  1311,  the  younger 
branch  continued  to  flourish  at  Bothal,  and  soon  adopted  the  name 
of  Mitford,  taking  their  patronymic  from  the  property  which  the 
family  had  then  held  for  two  and  a  half  centuries. 

It  was  to  that  branch  that  the  famous  Hermit  of  Warkworth 
belonged,  whose  tragic  story  was  woven  into  a  poem  by  Dr.  Johnson's 
friend,  Bishop  Percy  of  Dromore,  who  collected  the  "  Reliques  of 
Ancient  Poetry."  The  poem,  very  poor  stuff,  was  published 
separately  some  years  after  the  "  Reliques." 

This  Bertram  was  in  love  with  a  neighbouring  Lady  Isabel  de 
Widdrington,  and  she  returned  his  love,  "  but  like  a  true  daughter  of 

'  These  northern  counties  here 
Whose  word  is  snaffle,  spur  and  spear,' 


8  Memories 

she  chose  to  put  his  mettle  to  the  test  before  giving  him  her  hand. 
She  sent  him  a  helmet  as  her  love-token,  desiring  him  to  try  its 
temper  '  wherever  blows  fell  sharpest ;  '  and  Bertram,  obedient  to 
her  behest,  rode  with  his  brother-in-arms,  Lord  Percy,  on  a  raid 
into  Scotland,  where  he  was  wounded  nearly  to  the  death  in  a 
desperate  fray.  The  tidings  were  brought  to  Isabel,  who,  struck 
with  terror  and  remorse,  at  once  set  out  to  go  to  him,  but  on  her 
way  was  seized  by  some  prowling  moss-troopers,  and  carried  off 
to  one  of  their  secret  fastnesses  beyond  the  border.  Thus  when  at 
the  downfall  of  the  night  her  rescued  Knight  was  carried  home  on  the 
shields  of  his  followers,  he  found  his  lady  gone,  and  all  traces  of  her 
lost.  He  made  a  vow  never  to  rest  till  he  had  found  her,  and  his 
brother  promised  to  help  him  in  the  quest.  As  soon  as  his  health 
permitted,  they  went  forth  together  in  a  humble  disguise,  and  the 
better  to  conduct  their  search,  agreed  to  separate,  the  brother 
going  northwards  and  Bertram  himself  to  the  west.  For  many 
weary  days  and  weeks  he  wandered  over  moss  and  moor  in  vain  ; 
till  at  length  when  he  had  almost  lost  heart,  a  compassionate  pilgrim 
directed  him  to  a  distant  peel-tower  in  which  a  lady's  voice  had  been 
heard  lamenting. 

Bertram  found  the  place,  and  recognized  the  voice  ;  but  watched 
the  tower  for  two  successive  nights  without  obtaining  a  glimpse  of 
his  Isabel.  On  the  third  night,  however,  that  he  lay  crouched  in 
his  hiding-place,  he  saw  her  descend  a  ladder  of  ropes  thrown  from 
an  upper  window,  assisted  by  a  man  muffled  up  in  a  cloak,  who  bore 
her  across  the  little  stream  and  led  her  away,  clinging  fondly  to  his 
arm.  Bertram,  maddened  at  the  sight,  rushed  after  them  with 
his  naked  sword,  and  attacked  his  rival,  who  defended  himself 
manfully  ;  but  after  a  stubborn  conflict,  Bertram  succeeded  in 
bringing  him  to  the  ground,  and  stabbed  him  to  the  heart,  with  the 
words, '  Die,  traitor  !  '  Then,  when  she  heard  his  voice  the  wretched 
Isabel  for  the  first  time  knew  who  he  was,  and  sprang  forward  to 
arrest  the  blow,  shrieking,  '  It  is  thy  brother  !  '  She  was  too  late, 
for  the  deed  was  done,  and  in  the  struggle  to  throw  herself  between 
them,  she  slipped  against  Bertram's  sword,  and  fell  pierced,  by  his 
brother's  side. 

For  that  night's  bloody  tragedy  the  unhappy  Bertram  did  penance 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race 


to  the  end  of  his  days.  He  renounced  every  tie  that  bound  him  to 
the  world.  His  sword  and  spear  were  hung  up  in  his  hall,  his  in- 
heritance passed  on  to  others  and  his  goods  were  given  to  the  poor, 
while  he  himself,  clad  in  monastic  garb,  took  refuge  in  the  rocky 
recesses  of  Coquetdale,  near  Warkworth  Castle.  No  more  ideal 
retreat  could  be  devised  for  an  anchorite  than  this  lovely,  seques- 
tered glen,  where  the  hurrying  Coquet  stays  its  troubled  current 
beneath  precipitous  cliffs,  clothed  with  trees  that  spring  from  every 
chink  and  crevice  of  the  stone  ;  and  from  an  overhanging  grove  of 
stately  oaks  above,  a  runlet  of  the  purest  water  comes  rippling  down. 

Here  his  dwelling-place,  scooped  out  of  the  living  rock,  remains 
almost  as  perfect  as  when  he  left  it.  It  can  only  be  reached  from 
the  river  by  a  long  flight  of  steps.  Over  the  entrance  linger  the 
traces  of  the  original  inscription,  '  Sunt  mihi  lachryma  mea  cibo 
inter diu  et  noctu.'  The  first  cell  is  a  miniature  chapel,  complete 
in  all  its  details,  with  a  raised  altar  at  the  east  end  ;  and  on  a 
recessed  altar  tomb  beside  it  is  the  effigy  of  a  woman,  very  deli- 
cately designed,  but  now  broken  and  timeworn,  lying  with  her  head 
towards  the  east,  and  her  arms  slightly  raised,  showing  that  her 
hands  have  been  folded  in  prayer.  At  her  feet  in  a  niche  cut  in  the 
stone,  the  figure  of  the  Hermit  kneels  in  eternal  penitence,  his  head 
resting  on  his  hand.  Beyond  this,  reached  through  a  doorway, 
bearing  on  a  shield  the  Crucifixion  and  the  emblems  of  the  Passion, 
is  a  still  smaller  oratory,  used  by  the  Hermit  as  a  sleeping-place  ; 
with  a  similar  altar  at  the  farther  end,  and  near  it  a  narrow  ledge 
hewn  out  of  the  rock  for  his  couch. 

Neither  by  night  nor  by  day  did  he  ever  lose  sight  of  the  beloved 
effigy  in  the  adjoining  chapel ;  for  at  the  altar  a  window  is  con- 
trived through  which  he  could  see  it  as  he  knelt  at  his  devotions  ; 
and  when  lying  on  his  bed,  a  niche  cut  slantwise  through  the  parti- 
tion wall  still  enabled  him  to  rest  his  faithful  eyes  upon  it.  No  one 
knows  for  how  many  sorrowful  years  he  lived  here  in  penance  and 
contrition,  nor  when  death  came  to  his  release. 

Such  is  the  touching  story  of  the  Hermit  of  Warkworth,  who  was 
of  our  blood,  as  it  is  related  in  the  "  Battle  Abbey  Roll  "  which  I 
have  so  often  quoted. 

Bertram's  friend,  Lord  Percy,  kept  his  memory  green  by  paying 


io  Memories 

for  Masses  to  be  sung  in  the  Chapel,  and  the  allowance  for  the  purpose 
was  continued  until  the  Suppression  of  the  Monasteries,  and  accord- 
ing to  Hutchinson,  "  the  patent  is  extant  which  was  granted  to  the 
last  hermit  in  1532  by  the  Sixth  Earl  of  Northumberland." 


So  the  elder  branch  of  the  Bertrams  disappeared  in  1311,  and 
with  them  the  name,  for  the  Lords  of  Bothal  speedily  called  them- 
selves de  Mitford,  which  from  that  time  forth  became  the  family 
patronymic.  "  Happy  the  minister  who  does  not  make  history  " 
is  an  old  saying  which  may  well  be  applied  to  families,  for  if  in  the 
centuries  during  which  our  people  have  been  Lords  of  Mitford, 
though  they  produced  no  great  soldier,  no  great  statesman,  no 
Raleigh,  no  Drake,  no  Frobisher,  no  Sir  Thomas  More,  no  King's 
favourite,  at  any  rate  they  kept  their  heads  upon  their  shoulders. 
Political  ambition  was  apt  to  be  a  very  deadly  disease,  and  they 
had  it  not.  They  were  contented  to  live  held  in  respect  by  their 
neighbours,  to  act  as  high  sheriffs  when  called  upon  to  do  so,  and 
sometimes  to  represent  their  county  in  Parliament. 

Perhaps  the  most  distinguished  of  these  ancestors  of  ours  was 
Sir  John  de  Mitford,  who  was  Knight  of  the  Shire  for  Northumber- 
land in  various  Parliaments  during  the  reigns  of  King  Edward  the 
Third,  King  Richard  the  Second  and  King  Henry  the  Fourth. 
He  was  High  Sheriff  for  two  years,  and  acted  as  Commissioner  with 
John  Widdrington  and  Gerald  Heron  to  tender  the  Oath  of  Allegi- 
ance to  the  King  of  Scotland.  On  the  20th  of  May,  1369,  at  Newton 
Hall,  he  received  by  deed  of  feoffment  from  David  Strathbolgi, 
Second  Earl  of  Athol,  a  grant  of  all  his  lands  and  tenements  in  the 
Ville  of  Molesden,  to  be  holden  of  the  grantor  and  his  descendants 
by  the  annual  payment  of  sixpence.  It  has  been  said  that  this 
transfer  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  three  moles  as  the  family  arms, 
but  our  family  tradition,  which  I  believe  to  be  well  founded,  is  that 
they  were  of  much  older  date  and  taken  from  the  Want's  Beck,  the 
mole's  stream,  as  was  the  name  of  Molesden  itself.  Sir  John  was  in 
1386  Keeper  of  the  Seal  to  Edward  Duke  of  York  for  the  Liberty 
of  Tyndale. 

On  his  death  he  was  succeeded   by  his  elder  son  William,  who 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  11 

was,  like  his  father,  Knight  of  the  Shire  and  High  Sheriff  in  Henry 
the  Fifth's  reign.  Then  followed  his  son  John,  a  pious  benefactor 
of  the  Church,  living,  no  doubt,  in  the  sweetest  odour  of  sanctity, 
who  granted  tenements  in  Newcastle  to  the  Church  of  St.  Nicholas, 
and  gave  lands  in  Echewicke  to  the  Abbot  and  Convent  of  New- 
minster,  to  pray  for  his  soul  and  the  souls  of  his  ancestors.  He  died 
in  the  sixteenth  year  of  the  reign  of  King  Henry  the  Sixth.  The 
following  three  Lords  of  the  Manor,  Thomas,  Bertram  and  Cawen, 
were  inconspicuous  persons,  and  there  is  nothing  to  be  said  of  our 
forebears  until  we  come  to  Cuthbert,  who  in  the  sixth  year  of  Edward 
the  Sixth  was  with  Anthony  Mitford  of  Ponteland,  Commissioner 
for  the  inclosure  of  the  Middle  Marches.  This  said  Anthony  was  a 
rogue.  Cuthbert  Mitford  by  his  first  wife,  Ann,  daughter  of  one 
Wallis  of  Akeild,  had  one  son,  Robert,  and  three  daughters  :  failing 
that  son  Robert,  Anthony  of  Ponteland  would  become  Lord  of  the 
Manor  of  Mitford  and  heir  to  all  Cuthbert's  estate.  To  achieve 
this  end  he  hatched  a  plot,  seeking  to  prove  that  there  had  been  no 
marriage  between  Cuthbert  and  Ann  Wallis,  and  that  in  conse- 
quence Robert  was  illegitimate. 

He  contrived  to  have  his  contention  entered  in  the  Harleian 
MSS.,  and  to  have  Robert  described  as  nothus  natus — base- 
born,  but  when  he  presented  the  document  at  the  Heralds'  College, 
it  proved  to  be  signed  only  by  himself.  On  investigation,  the  lie 
was  nailed  to  the  counter,  Robert's  legitimacy  was  fully  proved, 
and  his  arms  were  certified  without  a  difference.  He  was  what 
would  be  looked  upon  in  these  days  as  a  person  of  rather  lax  opinions 
and  was  "  presented  "  at  the  Archdeacon's  Visitations  "  for  suffer- 
inge  divers  persons  to  eate,  drinke  and  play  atte  cardes  in  time  of 
eveninge  praier."  In  spite  of  the  Archidiaconal  thunders,  he  lived 
through  the  reigns  of  Queen  Elizabeth  and  King  James,  and  died  in 
the  first  year  of  King  Charles  the  First's  reign  at  the  good  old  age 
of  eighty-eight. 

He  was  succeeded  by  his  grandson  Robert,  both  of  whose  parents 
had  died  in  his  infancy  on  the  same  day.  This  Robert  is  an  ancestor 
of  special  interest  for  us.  In  the  first  place  it  was  to  him  that 
King  Charles  the  Second  restored  by  grant  the  Castle  and  royalties 
of  Mitford,  which  had  been  forfeit  in  punishment  of  Roger  Bertram's 


12  Memories 

treason  by  King  Henry  the  Third  in  1264,  and  secondly  it  is  from 
his  third  son,  John,  who  left  the  old  home  to  seek  his  fortune  as  a 
merchant  in  London,  that  we,  the  Mitfords,  formerly  of  Exbury, 
now  of  Batsford,  are  descended.  The  Mitfords  of  Pitshill  are  de- 
scended from  William,  who  was  a  great-grandson  of  the  Robert 
of  Charles  the  Second's  time. 

The  portraits  of  Robert  Mitford  and  Philadelphia  Wharton,  his 
wife,  are  at  Batsford.  The  contemporary  frame  of  her  picture  is 
surrounded  by  carved  oak  leaves  and  acorns  in  memory  of  the 
famous  escape  of  the  King,  and  to  denote  her  loyalty  to  his  cause. 

Let  us  linger  for  a  few  more  moments  among  the  ruins  of  the  old 
Cradle  of  our  Race.  In  the  dark  centuries,  when  even  if  there  was 
no  actual  war  between  England  and  Scotland,  there  was  almost 
continuous  fighting  between  the  fierce  clans  on  both  sides,  feuds  and 
raids  and  cattle-lifting  were  the  salt  of  northern  life  ;  hatred  was  a 
profession,  revenge  the  accomplishment  of  a  gentleman.  The 
border  castles  were  seldom  at  rest,  and  Mitford  fared  no  better  than 
its  neighbours. 

Dreaming  on  a  summer's  day  within  the,  to  us,  sacred  precincts, 
one  can  almost  hear  the  grey  walls  ringing  with  the  music  of  sword, 
spear  and  battle-axe  clashing  upon  hauberk  and  breast-plate — 
the  shouts  of  the  fighting  men  mad  with  the  lust  of  blood — clouds 
of  arrows  rattling  like  hail  against  the  battlements  should  a  head 
show  itself.  The  borderers  were  gay  men  at  fighting,  and  the 
Scots  ever  met  with  a  hot  welcome. 

After  the  treason  of  Sir  Roger  Bertram  in  1264,  wild  men  succeeded 
one  another  in  the  ownership  of  the  Castle.  In  the  year  1316  it 
was  the  home  of  a  freebooter  of  the  pattern  of  the  Rhenish  robber 
knights,  named  Sir  Gilbert  de  Middleton.  He  was  an  old  soldier 
of  fortune,  who  had  fought  against  Lewelin  in  the  Welsh  war  and 
probably  for  that  service  was  rewarded  with  the  Castle  and  Manor 
of  Mitford.  But  he  was  infuriated  against  King  Edward,  on  account 
of  the  appointment  to  the  See  of  Durham  of  Lewis  de  Beaumont,  a 
cousin  of  the  Queen's.  It  was  said  that  Queen  Isabella,  "  the 
French  she- wolf,"  as  she  was  called,  had  knelt  upon  her  bare  knees 
before  the  King,  praying  him  to  confer  this  fat  Bishopric  upon  her 
kinsman.  Sir  Gilbert  rebelled,  proclaimed  himself  Duke  of 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  13 

Northumberland,  and  took  the  occasion  of  a  mission  which  the  King 
had  sent  to  Scotland,  headed  by  two  Cardinals  and  the  Bishop  of 
Durham,  to  swoop  down  upon  the  Embassy  and  pillage  it  on  its 
return  South. 

It  was  a  mistake  to  attack  the  scarlet  hat ;  the  Church  ever  had  a 
long  arm.  Sir  Gilbert  was  taken  prisoner  by  Ralph  de  Greystoke 
(or,  according  to  Hollinshed,  by  Thomas  Heton  and  William  de 
Fulton),  fettered  in  irons  and  carried  to  Newcastle,  whence  he  was 
shipped  to  Grimsby.  From  Grimsby  he  rode  to  London  with  his 
feet  tied  under  his  horse's  belly,  was  imprisoned  in  the  Tower,  and 
dragged  by  horses  to  the  gallows  on  the  26th  of  June,  1318.  His 
property  and  goods  and  those  of  his  brother  were  confiscated. 
(See  Hodgson's  "  Northumberland.") 

In  1318  Mitford  was  the  property  of  Adomar  de  Valence,  Earl  of 
Pembroke,  and  then  it  was  that  the  last  and  fatal  attack  upon  the 
Castle  by  the  King  of  Scotland  took  place,  and  the  grand  old  strong- 
hold that  had  withstood  the  buffets  of  so  many  sieges  was  finally 
laid  in  ruins. 

When  one  looks  at  the  humble  little  village  of  Mitford  to-day  it  is 
hard  to  realize  that  it  was  once  a  borough  !     I  know  not  how  it 
may  be  now,  but  when  I  was  a  boy  the  old  folk  held  firmly  to  their 
traditions  and  to  the  legends  of  the  ancient  greatness  of  the  place 
there  was  an  old  rhyme  which  they  loved  to  quote : 

"  Mitford  was  Mitford  ere  Morpeth  was  ane 
And  still  shall  be  Mitford  when  Morpeth  is  gane." 

The  feeling  of  clanship  was  strongly  rooted  in  the  people.  In 
the  fifties  of  last  century  there  was  still  living  a  delightful  old  woman, 
one  Bella  Harbottle,  who  with  her  brother  inhabited  two,  or  three 
rooms,  which  were  all  that  remained  of  the  seventeenth-century 
Manor  House — just  a  tower  in  an  old-fashioned  garden,  which  the 
brother  tended,  in  the  beauty  of  which  Bacon  himself  would  have 
taken  delight.  The  brother  and  sister  were  specimens  of  a  grand 
old  type  of  northern  peasantry  not  yet  passed  away,  thank 
Heaven  !  Their  beautifully  chiselled  features,  no  less  than  their 
proud  bearing  and  dignified  manners,  might  have  befitted  the 
descendants  of  crusaders.  She  was  always  clad  in  an  old-fashioned 


14  Memories 

lilac  print  gown,  with  a  square  of  shepherd's  plaid  crossed  over  the 
bosom.  Her  delicate,  high-bred  face,  with  blue  eyes,  still  bright  and 
beautiful,  was  framed  in  the  frills  of  an  immaculate  mutch  covering 
her  ears  and  almost  hiding  the  snow-white  hair  ;  her  small  feet  were 
always  daintily  cased  in  grey  worsted  stockings  and  scrupulously 
blacked  shoes.  She  must  have  been  nearly  eighty  years  old  when  I 
used  to  sit  with  her  in  her  kitchen — the  aged  dame  on  one  side  of 
the  hearth,  the  little  boy  on  the  other,  listening  to  her  old-world 
tales  of  the  past  glories  of  Mitford.  There  were  always  a  few  old- 
fashioned  flowers  in  the  kitchen-parlour,  and  she  herself  sweetly 
reminded  one  of  lavender.  The  good  soul  was  always  stout  for  the 
rights  and  honour  of  the  family. 

A  gentleman  who  had  bought  a  small  adjoining  estate  built  him- 
self a  house  just  on  the  boundary.  Every  day,  almost,  old  Bella 
would  walk  out,  leaning  on  her  crutched  stick,  to  see  that  there  was 
no  encroachment.  The  neighbour,  aware  of  this,  and  greatly 
amused,  said  to  her  one  day,  "  You  see,  Bella,  it  is  all  right.  I  am 
not  removing  my  neighbour's  landmark."  "  Ah  !  "  grumbled  she, 
with  her  sweet  Northumbrian  burr,  "  I'm  thinking  that  you're 
building  your  house  verra  high."  Even  the  air  was  sacred  to  the 
family  of  her  worship. 

To  the  east  of  the  Manor  House  Tower  is  the  old  Norman  church. 
When  I  first  went  to  Mitford  it  was  a  mere  wreck,  just  sufficiently 
weather-tight  for  service  to  be  held  ;  but  it  was  beautifully  restored 
some  fifty  years  since  by  the  piety  of  the  last  owner  but  one, 
Colonel  John  Philip  Mitford. 

And  now  it  is  time  for  us  to  leave  the  north  and  travel  south- 
ward with  those  who  are  more  immediately  responsible  for  us. 

Merchant  John,  then,  came  to  London,  where  he  seems  to  have 
prospered  in  his  business,  so  much  so  as  to  make  us  wish  that  he 
had  been  furnished  in  his  baptism  with  some  other  Christian  name, 
for  he  became  possessed  of  original  shares  in  the  Royal  Exchange, 
the  building  of  which  King  Charles  the  Second  laid  the  foundation 
stone  in  1667  to  take  the  place  of  its  predecessor  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  time,  which  had  been  destroyed  in  the  great  fire  of 
1666.  Unfortunately  there  was  no  mention  of  these  shares  in  his 
will.  There  is  no  doubt  that  they  were  the  property  of  this  par- 


WILLIAM    M1TFORD    (HISTORIAN    OF    GREECE). 

From  an  oil  painting  by  John  Jackson,  R.A. 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race 


ticular  John,  our  immediate  ancestor,  and  when  my  father  and  the 
late  Lord  Redesdale  tried  to  prove  their  claim  to  them  nobody 
doubted  its  justice,  but  they  were  defeated  by  the  fact  that  they 
could  not  prove  that  there  was  no  other  John  Mitford  to  whom 
they  might  have  belonged ;  so  there  they  lie  in  some  mouldy  old 
chest,  more  useless  than  dead  leaves  in  autumn.  Be  this  a  lesson 
to  those  who  call  their  sons  John,  or  Thomas,  or  William,  to  give 
them  some  second  and  less  usual  name  to  make  what,  in  armorial 
bearings,  the  heralds  call  a  difference. 

Of  this  John  and  his  son  William  there  is  nothing  to  be  said, 
but  the  son  of  the  latter  was  another  John,  whose  marriage  on  the 
I3th  of  September,  1740,  with  Elizabeth,  the  daughter  and  heiress 
of  Willey  Reveley,  of  Newton  Underwood  and  Throphill  in  North- 
umberland and  Newby-super-Wiske  in  Yorkshire,  played  an 
important  part  in  the  history  of  our  family,  for  to  them  were  born 
two  remarkable  sons,  William,  the  historian  of  Greece,  and  John, 
the  first  Lord  Redesdale.  Indirectly,  too,  this  marriage  was  the 
cause  of  a  goodly  inheritance  coming  to  Lord  Redesdale  in  1808. 

William  Mitford,*  who  was  born  on  the  loth  of  February,  1744, 
was  my  great-grandfather,  and  a  man  of  many  and  various  accom- 
plishments, in  his  youth  famous  as  one  of  the  handsomest  men  of 
his  day.  Not  only  was  he  a  profound  scholar,  but  he  had  a  great 
knowledge  of  art ;  he  drew  beautifully,  and  I  have  many  of  his 
water-colour  paintings,  which  are  of  rare  merit ;  his  sketch-books 
recording  his  journeys  in  many  parts  of  England  are  even  now  a 
joy  to  look  through.  The  Royal  Academy  of  his  day  recognized 
his  worth  by  making  him  their  historian,  an  office  now  filled  by 
Lord  Morley  of  Blackburn.  In  music,  also,  he  was  an  expert, 
having  a  practical  knowledge  of  several  instruments,  and  so  keen 
was  he  that  when  he  was  an  old  man,  past  seventy,  he  made  a 
journey  into  Wales,  a  matter  of  several  days  in  those  posting  times, 
in  order  to  learn  the  principles  of  the  triple  Welsh  harp. 

He  was  Member  of  Parliament  successively  for  Newport  in 
Cornwall,  Beeralston  and  Romney,  and  commanded  the  Hampshire 
Militia.  It  was  as  a  Militia-man  that  he  made  friends  with  Gibbon, 
who  was  a  brother  officer  in  the  same  regiment,  and  who  persuaded 

*  Painted  by  Jackson. 


1 6  Memories 

him  to  undertake  the  history  of  Greece,  so  that  the  Hampshire 
Militia  had  the  honour  of  producing  two  classical  historians — the 
one  of  the  "  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,"  the  other 
of  Greece. 

Mitford's  history  naturally  took  the  Tory  side  in  Greek  politics  : 
Grote  and  Thirlwall  followed  on  the  Radical  side.  One  day 
Thomas  Carlyle  began  talking  to  me  about  my  great-grandfather ; 
Carlyle  was  certainly  no  Tory,  but  he  praised  the  so-called  Tory 
book  far  above  the  other  two.  He  said  "  that  Mitford  had  the 
talent  of  clothing  the  dry  bones  of  history  with  living  flesh  and 
blood  :  he  made  the  old  Greeks  speak  and  behave  like  human 
beings,  breathing  a  living  spirit  into  his  work."  The  other  two 
were  so  dreary  and  dull  that  they  provoked  no  sympathy  in  him. 

Beyond  all  this  the  old  Colonel,  as  he  was  called,  was  a  very 
skilful  forester  and  gardener.  I  possess  an  old,  much-worn 
pruning  knife  with  a  horn  handle  which  he  always  carried  about 
when  he  was  engaged  in  his  favourite  pursuit  of  landscape  garden- 
ing. When  a  boy,  he  and  his  brother  had  been  at  school  at  Mr. 
Gilpin's  academy.  Later  in  life  he  was  able  to  present  Gilpin 
to  the  living  of  Boldre  in  Hampshire.  This  led  to  the  writing  of 
the  famous  "  Forest  Scenery,"  which  Gilpin  dedicated  to  his  former 
pupil  and  subsequent  patron.  Gilpin's  brother  was  Sawrey 
Gilpin,  R.A.,  the  animal  painter. 

It  happened  that  in  the  spring  of  1862  my  father,  having  some 
business  to  transact  with  his  agent  and  being  unable  to  attend 
to  it  himself,  sent  me  down  to  Exbury  to  act  on  his  behalf.  Mr. 
Lewis  Ricardo,  who  was  the  tenant  at  the  time,  hearing  that  I 
was  going  there,  very  kindly  offered  me  bed  and  board,  saying 
that,  though  he  was  detained  in  London,  his  housekeeper  would 
look  after  me.  She  made  me  very  comfortable,  and  after  a  light 
dinner  and  a  pint  of  claret  I  went  to  bed.  In  the  dead  of  the 
night  I  was  awakened — as  it  seemed  to  me — by  a  most  uncanny 
noise  in  the  room  over  my  head.  Someone  was  dragging  a  very 
heavy  weight  up  and  down  the  floor ;  then  I  heard  the  door  open, 
and  the  footsteps  came  down  the  stairs  pulling  the  weight,  bump, 
bump,  bump,  until  whoever  it  was  reached  my  door.  Then  there 
was  silence  for  a  minute  or  two,  and  presently  the  weight  was 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  17 

dragged  up  again,  bumping  as  before,  the  door  of  the  upstairs  room 
was  opened,  the  weight  was  dragged  across  it,  and  all  was  still. 

I  must  have  been  dreaming  all:  the  time,  for,  though  I  was  in 
deadly  fear  of  I  knew  not  what,  it  never  occurred  to  me  to  get  up 
and  see  what  awful  being  it  was  that  was  standing  so  mysteriously 
outside  my  room.  But  the  whole  thing  was  so  vivid  that  the  next 
morning  I  asked  the  housekeeper  who  had  occupied  the  room 
above  me  that  night.  Her  answer  was  that  the  room  had  been 
empty  and  locked  and  the  key  in  her  possession. 

When  I  got  back  to  London  I  told  my  father  what  I  had  heard. 
He  was  a  good  deal  startled,  and  replied  that  one  of  his  grand- 
father's eccentricities  had  been,  after  a  long  day's  literary  work, 
to  go  up  into  an  empty  upstairs  room  and  pull  a  heavy  trunk  about 
for  exercise.  I  had  never,  so  far  as  I  knew,  heard  this  before ; 
but  it  is  possible,  if  it  be  true  that  in  our  sleep  we  sometimes 
remember  things  long  since  forgotten,  that  I  might  in  years  gone  by 
have  been  told  of  the  old  man's  whim,  and  that  the  fact  of  sleeping 
in  that  house  struck  some  chord  of  a  vanished  memory  ;  as  my 
father  spoke,  it  almost  seemed  as  if  my  presence  had  roused  the 
spirit  of  the  forefather  to  come  and  see  what  manner  of  creature 
his  great-grandson  might  be.  I  insert  the  story  for  the  benefit 
of  the  professors  of  oneiromancy.  To  me  it  seems  a  curious 
specimen  of  dream  mystification. 

The  historian's  eldest  son,  Henry,  was  a  captain  in  the  Royal 
Navy.  He  was  twice  married.  By  his  first  wife,  the  daughter  of 
Anthony  Wyke,  Attorney-General  of  Montserrat,  he  had  a  son 
and  two  daughters,  of  whom  only  one,  Frances,  was  alive  in  my 
time.  She  married  her  cousin,  Bertram  Mitford,  the  head  of  the 
family  and  Squire  of  Mitford,  which  she  occupied  after  his  death 
as  a  dower  house  ;  and  so  it  happened  that  as  a  boy  I  passed  many 
happy  holidays  in  the  old  home.  My  grandfather's  second  wife 
was  Mary  Leslie-Anstruther,  whom  he  married  in  1803.  In  the 
same  year  he  was  appointed  to  the  command  of  H.M.S.  York,  and 
before  commissioning  her  he  went  down  with  his  navigating  officer 
— master  was  the  title  in  those  days — to  survey  her.  They 
reported  her  unseaworthy.  To  that,  the  answer  was,  in  effect, 
"  Sail,  or  resign  your  commission." 

VOL.  i  2 


1 8  Memories 

Of  course  they  sailed,  and  on  Christmas  Eve,  1803,  in  a  fog  in 
the  North  Sea,  the  York  went  down  with  all  hands.  Her  guns  of 
distress  were  heard,  but  no  help  was  forthcoming.  I  have  been 
told  that  one  spar  with  "  York  "  -upon  it  was  washed  ashore  on  the 
coast  of  Yorkshire.  There  were  not  then  the  means  that  there  are 
now,  thanks  to  Lloyd's  and  modern  inventions,  of  obtaining  in- 
formation as  to  wrecks,  and  that  single  spar  was,  I  believe,  the 
solitary  evidence  of  the  fate  of  the  York.  It  was  something  very 
like  an  official  murder. 

My  father  was  born  on  the  following  twenty-first  of  June,  a 
posthumous  child,  and  lived  with  his  grandfather  and  his  two 
sisters.  His  mother  soon  married  again,  her  second  husband 
being  Mr.  Farrer,  of  Brayfield  in  Buckinghamshire,  who  had  been 
an  officer  in  the  Blues.  I  am  afraid  that  my  father  had  not  a 
very  happy  childhood,  for  the  historian  seems  to  have  been  rather 
crabbed  in  his  old  age.  Besides,  he  was  fully  taken  up  with  his 
studies  and  his  work,  and  cared  not  to  busy  himself  with  the 
yearnings  of  a  child.  However,  his  two  half-sisters,  Frances  and 
Louisa,  were  devoted  to  their  brother,  and  the  little  boy  had  a 
good  friend  in  his  grandfather's  younger  brother,  John,  who,  in 
the  meantime,  had  come  to  great  distinction.  Having  been  called 
to  the  Bar  in  1777,  he,  three  years  later,  published  the  famous 
book  commonly  called  "  Mitford  on  Pleadings,"  which  speedily 
became  a  classic.  Lord  Eldon  said  that  it  was  "  a  wonderful 
effort  to  collect  what  is  to  be  deduced  from  authorities  speaking 
so  little  what  is  clear  "  ;  while  Sir  Thomas  Plumer  declared  that  it 
"  reduced  the  whole  subject  to  a  system  with  such  universally 
acknowledged  learning,  accuracy  and  discrimination,  as  to  have 
been  ever  since  received  by  the  whole  profession  as  an  authoritative 
standard  and  guide." 

It  was  equally  well  accepted  in  America,  and  when  I  was  in 
the  United  States  in  1873  more  than  one  well-known  judge  and 
lawyer  came  up  to  me  wanting  to  know  what  relation  I  was  to  the 
"  Pleadings."  The  success  of  the  book  brought  prosperity  and  a 
seat  in  Parliament,  by  the  favour  of  his  cousin,  the  Duke  of  North- 
umberland. In  1793  he  succeeded  his  lifelong  friend  Sir  John 
Scott  (Lord  Eldon)  as  Solicitor-General ;  the  Attorneyship  fol- 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  19 

lowed  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  in  1801  he  became  Speaker  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  This  latter  office  he  did  not  hold  long, 
for  in  1802  Lord  Clare,  who  was  Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland,  died, 
and  Sir  John  Mitford  was  appointed  to  succeed  him,  being  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Redesdale  of  Redesdale  in  Northumber- 
land, a  title  which  he  took  from  the  beautiful  moorland  property 
on  the  southern  slope  of  the  Cheviots  which  he  had  purchased 
with  the  idea  of  linking  himself  as  closely  as  might  be  with  the 
border  home  of  the  ancient  clan. 

It  was  a  great  wrench  to  resign  the  Speakership  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  a  post  of  high  honour  for  which  he  was  admirably 
fitted.  He  left  an  assembly  over  which  he  presided  with  a  dignity 
and  impartial  tact  which  confirmed  the  esteem  and  regard  in 
which  he  was  held  by  its  members,  and  justified  their  choice.  At 
the  call  of  duty  he  parted  from  his  friends  and  severed  many  ties 
of  affection,  to  take  up  a  task  which,  however  congenial  it  might 
be  professionally,  carried  him  into  a  country  where  he  was  a 
stranger  with  a  surrounding  of  men  who  were  to  him  a  new  ex- 
perience— men  possessed  of  great  talents  and  a  charm  peculiarly 
their  own,  but  which  did  not  appeal  to  his  serious  and  rather 
matter-of-fact  nature.  On  the  bench  his  success  was  immediate 
and  triumphant. 

Sheil,  who  was  called  to  the  Bar  in  1811,  and  must  have  known 
many  of  the  counsel  who  practised  before  Lord  Redesdale,  said 
of  him  that  he  introduced  a  reformation  in  Irish  practice  "  by 
substituting  great  learning,  •  unwearied  diligence,  and  a  spirit  of 
scientific  discussion,  for  the  flippant  apophthegms  and  irritable 
self-sufficiency  of  Lord  Clare,"  and  Story  pronounced  him  to  be 
"  one  of  the  ablest  judges  that  ever  sat  in  equity." 

The  Irish  Bar  speedily  recognized  in  him  a  scientific  lawyer 
of  the  first  quality,  but  the  witty  barristers,  bubbling  over  with 
fun  and  rollicking  spirits,  were  socially  quite  out  of  touch  with 
him.  He  did  not  understand  them,  nor  they  him.  O'Flanagan, 
in  his  "  Lives  of  the  Lords  Chancellors  of  Ireland,"  tells  several 
amusing  stories  of  the  way  in  which  the  lawyers — none  too  re- 
spectfully, considering  the  dignity  of  his  office — cracked  jokes  in 
his  solemn  presence.  "  I  never  saw  Lord  Redesdale  more  puzzled," 

VOL.  I  2* 


2O  Memories 

says  Sir  Jonah  Harrington,  "  than  at  one  of  Plunket's  bons  mots. 
A  cause  was  argued  in  Chancery,  wherein  the  plaintiff  prayed 
that  the  defendant  should  be  restrained  from  suing  him  on 
certain  bills  of  exchange,  as  they  were  nothing  but  kites.  '  Kites  !  ' 
exclaimed  Lord  Redesdale,  '  Kites,  Mr.  Plunket  ?  Kites  could 
never  amount  to  the  value  of  these  securities.  I  don't  under- 
stand the  statement  at  all,  Mr.  Plunket.'  '  It  is  not  to  be  expected 
that  you  should,  my  lord,'  answered  Plunket.  '  In  England  and 
Ireland  kites  are  quite  different  things.  In  England  the  wind 
raises  the  kite,  but  in  Ireland  the  kite  raises  the  wind.'  '  I  do  not 
feel  any  better  informed  yet,  Mr.  Plunket/  said  the  matter-of- 
fact  Chancellor.  '  Well,  my  lord,  I'll  explain  the  thing  without 
mentioning  those  birds  of  prey  ' — and  thereon  he  explained  that 
in  Ireland  bills  and  notes  which  are  not  what  is  termed  good 
security  are  commonly  called  kites,  because  they  are  used  to  raise 
money,  which  is  termed  '  raising  the  wind.'  ' 

Great  as  was  Lord  Redesdale  as  a  judge,  there  were  other  duties 
of  his  office  which  militated  against  his  being  a  success  in  Ireland. 
He  was  a  devoted  Church  of  England  man  and  a  bitter  oppontn 
of  Catholic  emancipation,  and  it  was  abhorrent  to  him  that  any 
office,  even  that  of  justice  of  the  peace,  should  be  held  by  a  Roman 
Catholic.  A  letter  addressed  by  him  to  the  Earl  of  Fingal  on 
appointing  him  to  the  Commission  of  the  Peace  provoked  a  corre- 
spondence which  inflamed  the  Roman  Catholics  against  him,  and 
was  fiercely  blamed  in  the  House  of  Commons  by  Fox  and  Canning. 

The  final  crisis  was  brought  about  by  his  treatment  of  Lord 
Cloncurry,  who  had  twice  been  arrested  for  high  treason,  im- 
prisoned under  the  Habeas  Corpus  Suspension  Act  in  1799,  and 
very  harshly  treated  in  the  Tower  of  London.  When  the  Habeas 
Corpus  Act  was  restored,  he  regained  his  liberty  after  two  years 
all  but  a  few  days,  and  went  abroad  for  four  years.  On  his  return, 
a  Mr.  Burne,  a  King's  Counsel,  applied  on  Lord  Cloncurry's  behalf 
for  his  admission  to  the  Commission  of  the  Peace.  Lord  Redesdale 
resented  this  interference  of  a  third  person,  and  wrote  Mr.  Burne 
an  angry  and  not  very  judicious  answer,  in  which  Lord  Cloncurry's 
past  history  was  raked  up  as  a  ground  of  refusal.  This  drew  a 
furious  letter  from  Lord  Cloncurry  himself  in  which  he  recited  the 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  21 


illegality  and  cruelty  under  which  he  had  suffered,  and  made  a 
violent  attack  upon  the  bigotry  and  prejudice  of  the  Chancellor. 
The  Lord  Lieutenant,  the  Earl  of  Hardwicke,  at  once  ordered  the 
Chancellor  to  insert  Lord  Cloncurry's  name  in  the  magistracy  of 
the  two  Counties  of  Kildare  and  Dublin,  and  further  offered  to 
recommend  that  nobleman  for  promotion  in  the  Peerage.  The 
Viscount's  coronet  was  refused,  but  the  indignity  placed  upon 
the  Chancellor  was  complete.  Mr.  Ponsonby  was  appointed  to 
hold  the  Great  Seal  of  Ireland,  and  pending  his  arrival,  the  Great 
Seal  was  put  hi  Commission  and  Lord  Redesdale  was  not  even 
allowed  to  sit  in  the  Court  of  Chancery — his  own  court.  This, 
in  his  farewell  speech  to  the  Bar,  he  described  as  "  a  personal 
insult." 

His  final  letter  to  Lord  Cloncurry  was  characteristic.  "  My 
Lord,  I  have  desired  instructions  with  respect  to  the  insertion  of 
your  lordship's  name  in  the  Commission  of  the  Peace  for  the 
Counties  of  Dublin  and  Kildare,  and  I  have  to  request  that  your 
lordship  will  be  pleased  to  apply  to  Mr.  Ponsonby,  whom  His 
Majesty  has  appointed  Chancellor  of  Ireland,  and  to  whom  the 
Great  Seal  will  be  delivered  as  soon  as  he  shall  arrive  in  the  country. 
I  have,  etc.  (sgd.)  Redesdale."  So  the  stout  old  Lord  stuck  to  his 
colours,  and  without  bending  left  Ireland  in  1806,  having  held 
his  office  for  four  years. 

It  is  a  singular  instance  of  the  fickleness  of  fate  that  he  should 
have  been  hounded  out  of  Ireland  by  the  Roman  Catholics  of 
that  country,  when  their  co-religionists  in  England  had  a  few 
years  before  got  up  a  national  subscription  to  present  him  with 
a  magnificent  piece  of  gold  plate,  in  gratitude  for  the  determined 
action  in  the  House  of  Commons,  by  which  they  were  relieved 
from  those  penal  laws  to  which  they  had  been  subject  for  more 
than  two  hundred  years.  That  golden  vase  is  a  treasured  heirloom 
at  Batsford. 

There  was  nothing  inconsistent  in  his  conduct.  His  nature, 
essentially  humane  and  merciful,  recoiled  from  anything  which 
savoured  of  persecution  :  at  the  same  tune,  in  the  political  govern- 
ment of  his  country,  his  Protestant  principles  and  his  attachment 
to  the  existing  Constitution  found  no  place  for  the  professors  of 


22  Memories 

a  form  of  religion  which,  in  his  view,  constituted  a  danger  to  the 
State. 

Meanwhile,  in  1803,  Lord  Redesdale  had  contracted  a  marriage 
with  Lady  Frances  Perceval,  daughter  of  Lord  Egmont,  and  sister 
of  the  Prime  Minister,  Spencer  Perceval,  who  was  murdered  by 
Bellingham  in  1812.  This  happy  union  brought  him  three 
children,  two  of  whom,  his  son  who  afterwards  became  first  and 
only  Earl  of  Redesdale,  and  Frances  Elizabeth,  survived  him. 

Lord  Redesdale's  father,  John  Mitford  of  Exbury,  was  married, 
as  I  have  said  above,  to  a  Miss  Reveley,  whose  sister*  was  the 
wife  of  Thomas  Edwards  Freeman, f  a  wealthy  and  highly  respected 
squire  in  the  County  of  Gloucester.  This  Mr.  Freeman  had  only 
one  son,*  who  predeceased  him,  as  did  also  the  son's  wife,  Mary 
Curtis§  that  was,  leaving  a  daughterly  who  married  Mr.  Heath- 
cote  of  Dursley  in  Hampshire.  But  this  daughter  had  apparently 
inherited  the  bad  health  of  her  parents  ;  she  had  no  child,  and 
it  became  evident  to  Mr.  Freeman  that  she  was  not  likely  to  live  : 
so  in  his  will  he  made  provision  that  failing  her  and  any  children 
that  she  might  have,  since  he  had  apparently  no  relations  of  his 
own,  his  property  should  go  to  his  wife's  nephew,  Lord  Redesdale. 
Mrs.  Heathcote  did  not  survive  her  grandfather  by  many  days, 
and  almost  immediately  after  his  death  in  1808,  the  property  of 
Batsford  passed  to  the  ex-Chancellor  of  Ireland. 

One  fine  day  the  old  lord  took  his  little  son,  aged  three,  to  see 
Mr.  Freeman,  who  went  and  fetched  a  crazy  old  barrel  organ, 
which  he  proceeded  wheezily  to  grind  for  the  child's  pleasure  : 
when  he  had  finished  playing,  the  boy  turned  to  his  father  and 
said  with  much  dignity,  "  Give  the  old  man  a  shilling  !  "  to  the 

*  Painted  by  Romney. 

t  Painted  as  a  young  man  by  a  French  artist  in  the  manner  of  Nattier. 
Also  as  an  old  man  by ? 

|  Painted  by  Prince  Hoare  of  Bath — foreign  corresponding  secretary  of 
the  Royal  Academy 

§  Painted  by  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds. 

||  Portraits  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Heathcote  by  Owen. 

*R  A  pastel  of  her  as  a  little  girl  with  a  pet  goldfinch  in  a  cage,  by  Russell — 
generally  regarded  as  Russell's  best  work. 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  23 


great  amusement  of  the  benefactor  whose  property  the  child  was 
one  day  to  inherit. 

Lord  Redesdale  never  again  held  any  office,  though  Mr.  Perceval 
wished  him  to  return  to  the  Chancellorship  of  Ireland.  He  knew 
how  unpopular  he  was  in  that  country,  and  wisely  declined.  He 
preferred  his  independence,  and  became  a  very  useful  and  much 
consulted  member  of  the  House  of  Lords.  Lady  Redesdale  died 
in  1817,  and  Lord  Redesdale  thirteen  years  later  at  the  age  of 
eighty-one. 

The  second  Lord  Redesdale,  who  was  educated  at  Eton  and 
at  New  College,  Oxford,  speedily  made  his  mark  in  the  House 
of  Lords  by  his  diligence  and  capacity  for  business.  The  Duke 
of  Wellington  appointed  him  to  be  his  Whip,  and  encouraged 
him  to  master  all  the  details  of  the  procedure  and  private  business 
of  the  House  with  a  view  to  his  becoming  Chairman  of  Committees, 
an  office  for  which  on  the  death  of  Lord  Shaftesbury  in  February, 
1851,  he  was  chosen  unanimously  and  which  he  held  until  his  death 
in  1886. 

He  was  a  keen  sportsman,  master  and  owner  of  the  Heythrop 
hounds,  which  post  he  resigned  when  he  found  public  business 
increasingly  making  inroads  upon  his  time,  but  though  he  ceased 
to  be  master,  the  hounds  remained  his  property  until  Mr.  Albert 
Brassey,  who  had  recently  become  master,  made  overtures  to 
him  to  buy  them.  At  first  Lord  Redesdale  refused,  but  eventually 
yielded,  and  gave  the  purchase  money,  £2,000,  to  the  hunt  as  an 
endowment.  He  was  a  good  shot,  though  he  very  rarely  went 
out  with  a  gun  ;  gave  great  attention  to  local  affairs,  never  missing 
the  sittings  of  the  Board  of  Guardians.  "  Give  old  Pensioner 
(his  hack)  his  head,"  said  his  studgroom,  "  and  he'll  go  straight 
to  Shipston.*"  He  continued  to  hunt  so  long  as  he  was  able  and 
always  hacked  to  covert,  no  matter  what  the  distance  might  be. 

No  man  was  more  looked  up  to,  and  I  don't  believe  that  he 
had  an  enemy  in  the  world,  unless  it  might  be  among  certain 
Parliamentary  agents  and  promoters  over  whose  proceedings  he 
kept  so  strict  a  watch  that  he  earned  the  name  of  the  Lord  Dicta- 
tor. It  was  mainly  owing  to  his  determined  action  that  the 
*  Shipston  on  Stour,  where  the  guardians  meet. 


24  Memories 

attempt  to  abolish  the  appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  House  of  Lords 
fell  through.  His  literary  controversy  with  Cardinal  Manning 
on  the  Infallible  Church  and  the  Holy  Communion  is  still  remem- 
bered by  ecclesiastics.  He  wrote  several  pamphlets,  chiefly  on 
doctrinal  or  genealogical  subjects,  in  which  his  arguments  were 
always  ingenious  and  well  expressed.  In  1877  he  was  created 
an  Earl  by  Queen  Victoria  on  the  recommendation  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield. 

Lord  Redesdale  never  married.  He  and  his  sister  kept  house 
together  at  Batsford  until  her  death  in  1866.  She  was  a  woman 
of  great  ability,  full  of  sympathy  with  all  her  brother's  pursuits  : 
her  loss  was  a  cruel  blow  to  him,  and  during  the  twenty  years  which 
followed  between  her  death  and  his,  he  never  put  off  mourning. 
I  was  hi  the  Far  East  when  she  died,  and  after  all  these  years  I 
could  repeat  by  heart  much  of  the  touching  letter  which  he  wrote 
to  me  as  being  the  one  man  to  whom  he  could  open  out  the  grief 
that  was  in  his  soul. 

Batsford  stands  on  a  lovely  spur  of  the  Cotswold  Hills,  crowned 
with  a  glory  of  oaks  and  elms,  beeches,  ashes  and  chestnuts,  a 
most  fascinating  spot,  and  here  it  was  that,  under  the  genial 
influence  of  the  kind  old  lord,  whose  portrait  by  Lawrence  is  the 
very  embodiment  of  goodwill  towards  men,  the  happiest  days 
of  my  father's  childhood  were  spent. 

The  three  little  cousins  were  devoted  to  one  another.  It  was 
a  beautiful  friendship  which  strengthened  as  they  grew  up,  and 
only  ended  with  their  lives.  No  two  men  could  have  been  greater 
contrasts  than  my  father  and  the  late  Lord  Redesdale  :  perhaps 
their  affection  was  all  the  stronger  for  that  ;  it  had  begun  in  child- 
hood and  lasted  into  extreme  old  age  ;  they  were  always  happy 
together,  and  when  they  were  parted  it  was  rarely  that  a  day 
passed  without  their  writing  to  one  another.  They  went  to  the 
same  schools,  Iver  first,  then  Eton,  but  not  in  the  same  house.  At 
Oxford  Lord  Redesdale  was  at  New  College,  my  father  at  Magdalen 

My  father  did  not  stay  long  at  college.     He  soon  left  the  Uni 
versity  to  take  up  an  attacheship  at  the  Legation  at  Florence 
where  Lord  Burghersh*  was  minister,  in  whom  he  had  the  luck 
*  Afterwards  Earl  of  Westmorland,  grandfather  of  the  present  earl. 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  25 


to  find  a  most  sympathetic  chief,  devoted  to  art,  and  especially 
to  music,  which  with  my  father  was  a  passion.  The  musical 
society  of  Florence  at  that  time  was  brilliant,  and  the  young 
attache  was  speedily  welcomed  into  its  intimacy.  Of  those  days 
he  had  many  stories,  none,  I  think,  more  curious  than  this. 

One  evening  after  the  opera  there  was  a  supper  party  at  the 
house  of  the  Crisis,  the  parents  of  the  famous  prima  donna. 
Giudetta,  the  elder  daughter,  had  been  singing  and  the  unhappy 
tenor  had  been  hissed  off  the  stage  with  all  the  viciousness  of 
which  an  Italian  audience  has  the  secret.  My  father  was  sitting 
next  to  Giulia  Grisi,  then  a  little  girl  of  twelve — it  was  in  1827 — 
and  he  happened  to  say  to  her  :  "  Ebben  Giulia,  I  suppose  some 
day  you  will  be  singing  in  grand  opera  ?  "  "I  sing  in  opera," 
answered  the  beautiful  child,  "  and  run  the  risk  of  being  hissed 
like  that  wretched  man  to-night  !  "  In  two  years'  time,  1829, 
she  made  a  precocious  de"but  at  Bologna,  and  was  not  exactly 
hissed  !  Seldom  can  there  have  been  a  more  triumphant  career 
than  hers  from  the  day  when,  as  a  mere  chit  of  fourteen,  she 
dazzled  the  world  with  her  beauty  and  that  lovely  velvety  voice.? 

There  was  also  at  that  time  at  Florence  a  very  charming  English 
coterie,  which  gathered  round  Lord  and  Lady  Burghersh.  Lord 
and  Lady  Dillon  were  there  with  their  daughters,  and  I  have  often 
heard  my  wife's  grandmother,  old  Lady  Stanley  of  Alderley,  who 
was  one  of  them,  say  how  agreeable  the  society  of  the  Legation 
then  was.  Among  others  who  occupied  villas  were  my  grand- 
parents, Lord  and  Lady  Ashburnham,  and  it  was  there  that  my 
father  and  mother  made  acquaintance.  They  were  married  in 
February,  1828. 

There  is  much  talk  nowadays  about  links  with  the  past.  I 
take  it  that  there  are  not  many  men  who  can  say,  as  I  can,  that 
they  had  an  uncle  whose  portrait  was  painted  by  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds who  died  in  1792.  My  grandfather's  first  wife  was  Lady 
Sophia  Thynne,  and  there  is  a  beautiful  portrait  of  her  at  Ash- 
burnham by  Sir  Joshua,  playing  with  her  baby  boy  who  lies  in 
her  lap:  that  boy,  my  uncle,  was  born  in  1785,  just  one  hundred 
and  thirty  years  ago.  The  picture  was  privately  engraved,  and  I 
have  one  of  the  only  twenty-five  copies  that  were  struck  off. 


26  Memories 

His  second  wife,  my  grandmother,  was  Lady  Charlotte  Percy, 
sister  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland.  She  was  a  noted  beauty, 
and  there  is  a  charming  portrait  of  her  by  Hoppner,  which  has 
also  been  engraved. 

Among  the  treasures  which  are  at  Ashburnham  is  one  of  the 
two  shirts  worn  by  King  Charles  the  First  at  his  execution. 
Everybody  remembers  how  the  King  insisted  on  wearing  two 
shirts  lest  on  that  cold  January  morning  he  should  shiver,  and  men 
should  think  that  it  was  from  fear.  The  shirt  was  kept  as  a  sacred 
relic  by  our  ancestor,  John  Ashburnham,  who  attended  His 
Majesty  on  the  scaffold  :  it  was  deeply  stained  with  the  blood  of 
the  Martyr,  and  people  used  to  beg  to  be  allowed  to  touch  it  as  a 
remedy  for  the  King's  Evil.  When  my  grandmother  came  back 
from  Florence,  she  asked  the  housekeeper  where  the  shirt  was. 
"  Quite  safe,  Mylady,"  was  the  answer,  "  but  it  was  so  stained 
that  I  have  had  it  washed."  The  pity  of  it  !  The  second  shirt 
is  at  Windsor. 

My  grandfather's  Garter  was  a  great  honour,  if  something  of  a 
disappointment.  He  had  been  a  great  friend  of  George  the  Fourth 
when  he  was  Prince  of  Wales,  and  the  Prince  had  promised  him  that 
when  he  should  come  to  the  throne,  he  would  show  him  some  mark 
of  his  favour.  Lord  Ashburnham  attended  his  first  levee.  In 
those  days,  and  indeed  down  to  the  end  of  King  William  the  Fourth's 
reign,  a  levee  was  not  what  it  is  now  ;  it  was  a  reception  attended  by 
very  few  people,  and  the  King  entered  into  conversation  with 
everyone  present  in  turn.  The  King  greeted  my  grandfather  most 
cordially,  saying,  "  Ah  !  George,  I  see  you  have  come  to  remind  me 
of  my  promise.  Well,  there  is  a  Garter  vacant,  and  you  shall  have 
it."  (The  Garter,  like  all  other  honours,  was  then  still  in  the  gift 
of  the  sovereign  without  any  reference  to  ministers).  My  grand- 
father was  deeply  grateful,  but  he  had  a  large  family,  and  he  had 
hoped  that  he  might  have  obtained  for  his  second  son  some  one  of 
those  snug  offices  to  which  the  only  duty  attached  was  the  reception 
of  the  salary — sinecures  now  all  vanished  ! — and  instead  of  that, 
at  a  moment  when  he  was  feeling  rather  poor,  he  had  to  find  one 
thousand  pounds  for  fees. 

Of  my  mother's  brothers  and  sisters,  those  that  I  knew  best  were 





The  Cradle  and  the  Race  27 

my  uncles  Charles,  who  was  in  the  Diplomatic  Service,  and  Thomas, 
who  was  first  in  the  Coldstream  Guards  and,  after  exchanging  into 
the  line,  served  in  many  Indian  battles  ;  his  last  post  was  that  of 
Commander-in-Chief  at  Hong  Kong  ;  he  was  one  of  the  wittiest 
of  men,  endowed  with  the  power  of  giving  a  fantastic  turn  to  the 
most  commonplace  topics,  and  his  subtle  humour  was  enhanced 
by  being  rendered  in  a  musical  speaking  voice  which  was  a  special 
attraction  in  all  his  family.  He  was  the  darling  of  society,  and 
might  easily  have  been  a  spoilt  darling,  but  that  was  impossible. 

His  last  years — he  died  in  1872 — were  spent  in  the  very  able 
administration  of  various  charities.  The  widow  of  my  Uncle 
Charles,  a  brilliantly  clever  woman,  married  Sir  Godfrey  Webster, 
and  became  the  chatelaine  of  Battle  Abbey,  which  was  afterwards 
bought  by  the  Duchess  of  Cleveland,  the  authoress  of  the  "  Roll  of 
Battle  Abbey,"  and  the  mother  of  Lord  Rosebery.  My  aunt,  Lady 
Jane  Swinburne,  was  the  mother  of  the  poet.  She  was  a  very  culti- 
vated woman,  to  whose  bringing  up  he  owed  the  finest  side  of  his 
character. 

I  hardly  knew  my  eldest  uncle,  Lord  Ashburnham,  the  famous 
scholar  and  bibliophile,  a  man  of  recognized  learning  and  taste. 
He  was  a  great  Pasha  of  whom  men  stood  in  terror.  Old  Mr. 
Quaritch,  the  bookseller,  used  to  tell  a  good  story  of  him. 

Like  the  rest  of  mankind,  he  quailed  before  the  great  man.  The 
running  account  between  the  two  used  to  run  into  very  high  figures. 
One  day  Mr.  Quaritch  called  at  Ashburnham  House,  and  the  Earl, 
glaring  at  him  through  his  awe-compelling  spectacles,  asked  what  he 
wanted.  "  Well,  my  lord,  I  have  come  to  ask  your  lordship  if  you 
could  let  me  have  a  little  money  on  account."  "  Money,  sir  !  " 
answered  my  uncle,  "  what  on  earth  can  you  want  with  money  ?  " 
"  My  lord,  there  is  a  great  sale  coming  off  at  Paris  next  week,  and 
as  your  lordship  knows  these  Paris  sales  are  a  question  of  ready 
money."  "  Go  away,  sir  !  Go  away  !  You  want  to  go  to  Paris 
and  speculate  with  MY  MONEY  f  "  A  just  indignation  beamed 
through  the  awful  spectacles.  The  argument  was  irresistible.  Mr. 
Quaritch  was  glad  to  make  his  escape,  crossed  over  to  Paris  the  next 
day  and  did  not  "  speculate  with  my  uncle's  money." 

And  now  as  a  last  word  let  me  brag  a  little  after  the  manner  of 


Memories 


Ajax  and  Ulysses  as  recorded  in  the  quotation  from  Ovid,  with  which 
I  started  this  record.  It  is  true  that,  unlike  those  heroes,  I  cannot 
claim  a  descent  from  Jupiter,  who,  after  all,  was  rather  a  disreput- 
able Pere  Prodigue  ;  yet  I  am  inclined,  for  my  children's  sake,  and 
as  an  encouragement  to  them  to  incite  their  own  children  to  prove 
themselves  worthy  "  citizens  of  no  mean  city,"  to  show  them  that 
they  come  of  a  goodly  stock  on  both  sides.  I  have  in  my  possession 
a  short  family  tree  hi  the  handwriting  of  the  second  Lord  Redesdale, 
who,  as  I  have  said  above,  took  great  delight  in  genealogy.  That 
tree  shows  that  the  Lords  Ogle  of  Northumberland,  who  were  our 
forbears,  were  descended  both  on  the  father's  side  and  on  the 
mother's  from  Charlemagne.  My  cousin  traced  it  as  follows  : 

Charlemagne,  A.D.  800. 

Pepin,  King  of  Italy. 

Bernard,  818. 

Pepin,  Lord  of  Peroune  and  St.  Quentin. 

Herbert  I.,  902. 

Herbert  II.,  Count  de  Vermandois,  943. 

Robert,  Count  de  Troyes. 

Adelair  --=2  Geoffrey,  Earl  of  Anjou,  957. 

Fulco  II.,  the  Black  Earl  of  Anjou. 

Ermangarde  =  Geoffrey,  Count  de  Gastinois. 

I 

I 
Fulco  IV., 


1 

Earl  of  Anjou  and  King 

Judith  = 

Iro  Tailbois 

of  Jerusalem 

niece    of    William    the 

Baron     of 

mtagenet. 

Conqueror    and    widow 

Kendal,ni4 

King  of  England 

of    Waltheof,     Earl    of 

Northumberland     and 

Lord  of  Hepple  Barony 

William    Tailbois    de    Hepple, 

John 

Henry  III. 
Edward  I. 
Edward  II. 
Edward  III. 
John  of  Gaunt. 

Joan  =  Neville,    Earl    of    Westmor- 
land 

Catherine  =  Mowbray,  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk 
Catherine  =  Sir  Robert  Grey 


Maud 


who  married 


1150. 

Richard. 
Robert. 
Robert 
Robert,  1300 

Joan  Annabella  =  Sir  Robert  Ogle, 
heiress   of   Hepple 
Barony. 

Robert  =  Helen,     daughter     of     Sir 
Robert  Bertram. 
Robert  —  Joan  de  Heton 
Sir  Robert  Ogle. 


The  Cradle  and  the  Race  29 


Constance,  the  daughter  of  Sir  Robert  Ogle  (the  first  Lord  Ogle),  married 
John  de  Mitford  in  1437,  and  from  them  descended  : 
Bertram. 
Gawen,  1550. 
Cuthbert 
Robert. 
Cuthbert 
Robert,  b.  1612. 
John. 
William. 
John. 

William  (the  historian,  my  great-grandfather). 
Captain  Henry  Mitford,  R.N. 
Henry  Reveley  Mitford. 
Myself. 

My  wife's  father,  David,  seventh  Earl  of  Airlie,  was  the  lineal 
descendant  of  the  Mormaers,  hereditary  royal  deputies  of  Angus. 
Scotland  was  in  ancient  days  divided  into  seven  parts,  each  ruled 
by  a  Mormaer  or  Maormor,  a  title  which  as  long  ago  as  the  eleventh 
century  was  converted  into  that  of  Earl.  The  story  of  the  Ogilvys 
in  more  modern  days,  how  they  fought  for  their  King  and  were 
attainted  as  Jacobites,  is  too  well  known  to  need  retelling,  nor  need 
I  speak  of  the  burning  by  the  Campbells  of  the  Bonnie  House  of 
Airlie.  Historians  have  recorded  it ;  poets  and  musicians  have 
sung  it. 

Lord  Airlie  married  Henrietta  Blanche,  the  daughter  of  Lord 
Stanley  of  Alderley,  a  cadet  branch  of  a  family  so  proud  that  it 
used  to  be  said  of  them  "  The  Stanleys  do  not  marry  :  they  contract 
alliances."  Here  again  are  two  pedigrees  tracing  back  to  the 
remotest  times  of  which  there  is  any  record.  There  is  no  need  to 
search  out  the  family  tree  of  the  Stanleys  to  prove  their  descent 
from  Charlemagne.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge.  It  is 
only  in  the  case  of  inconspicuous  families  like  our  own  that  it  is 
well  to  set  down  for  those  who  come  after  us  that  which  is  so  easily 
lost  sight  of.  When  in  this  year,  1915,  the  shells  are  flying  in  the 
trenches,  it  should  be  a  stimulant  to  a  man  to  think  that  he  has  in 
his  veins  some  of  the  blood  of  Charlemagne  and  of  that  glorious  old 
Charles  Martel,  the  hammer  that  at  the  battle  of  Poitiers  saved 
Europe  from  being  overrun  by  hordes  of  Saracens  nearly  twelve 
hundred  years  ago. 


CHAPTER    II 

FRANKFORT — PARIS — TROUVILLE 

I  WAS  born  on  the  24th  of  February,  1837,  m  South  Audley 
Street,  in  a  house  long  since  pulled  down,  which  stood  at  the 
southern  corner  of  Hill  Street.  My  father  had  left  the  Diplomatic 
Service  on  his  marriage  and  for  some  years  my  parents  lived  at 
Exbury,  the  old  family  place  overlooking  the  Solent  through  vistas 
in  the  trees,  where,  sitting  in  the  drawing-room,  you  could  see  the 
great  battleships  with  their  bellying  sails — men-of-war  of  the  pattern 
of  Nelson's  days — the  stately  wooden  walls  of  old  England,  the  huge 
West  Indiamen  travelling  to  and  from  Southampton,  "  sailing 
between  worlds  and  worlds  with  steady  wing  " — and  the  dainty 
little  Cowes  yachts  pertly  flitting  among  them  like  graceful  white 
gulls. 

Ships  were  indeed  a  thing  of  beauty  in  those  days,  and  Exbury 
was  an  earthly  paradise  ;  but  like  diamond  tiaras  and  ropes  of 
pearls,  it  was  a  costly  luxury,  unremunerative.  My  people  had  to 
retrench,  the  lovely  home  was  let,  and  they  went  abroad  to  econo- 
mize. In  this  way  it  happened  that  I  first  awoke  to  life  at  Frankfort 
in  1840 — that  at  any  rate  is  my  earliest  dim  recollection.  Two 
years  later  my  father  left  Germany  and  took  us  to  live  in  France. 

1842-1846. — I  can  hardly  believe  that  it  is  only  seventy- three 
years  since  we  first  went  to  live  in  France.  When  I  think  of  the 
immense  changes  that  have  taken  place  in  that  beloved  country 
since  then,  it  seems  more  like  seven  hundred.  The  upheavals  of 
wars  and  revolutions,  two  Dynasties  gone,  toppled  over  like  houses 
of  cards,  sovereigns  lauded  up  to  the  skies  one  year,  hounded  out 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouville  3 1 

of  existence  the  next,  followed  by  the  howls  and  execration  of 
infuriated  mobs ;  1848  and  the  barricades — the  coup  d'etat  of 
1851 — the  Second  Empire — the  Crimean  War — Mexico  and  the 
murder  of  Maximilian — the  war  of  1870  followed  by  the  Commune 
— France  shorn  of  two  great  provinces — Paris  improved  out  of 
all  its  picturesqueness  by  the  commonplace  uniformity  of  Haus- 
mannism — only  here  a  nook  and  there  a  corner  left — all  these 
seem  to  be  transformation  scenes  which  would  need  centuries  to 
carry  out,  and  yet  they  have  all  taken  place  in  my  lifetime.  But 
not  in  France  alone ;  in  Europe,  Asia,  America,  Africa  and 
Australia,  the  seventy-eight  years  of  my  life  have  witnessed  more 
changes  than  any  similar  period  in  the  world's  history. 

For  four  years  we  passed  the  winter  and  spring — the  season  in 
those  days — in  Paris — never  twice  in  the  same  apartments,  though 
we  always  remained  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Madeleine — a 
convenient  quarter  for  our  elders  and  for  ourselves,  for  it  was  no 
great  distance  from  the  gardens  of  the  Tuileries,  where  we  used  to 
play  with  a  number  of  little  French  friends — I  have  forgotten  the 
names  of  all  of  them  save  only  one  called  Jules — I  suppose  he  had  a 
surname,  but  if  he  did  I  never  knew  it — he  was  always  "  le  petit 
Jules."  He  was  of  about  my  own  age,  very  small,  but  of  a  quite 
demonic  cleverness,  and  at  marbles  he  was  a  hero.  He  broke  us 
all,  and  many  a  time  we  went  home  with  empty  bags — not  a  bulge 
in  ours — his  bursting  with  wealth,  and  yet  we  loved  him. 

I  remember  one  tragic  episode  of  a  beautiful  white  alley  with  rosy 
pink  veins,  the  pride  of  my  soul.  The  little  villain  challenged  me 
to  play  him,  offering  to  stake  a  superb  agate  against  it.  In  less 
time  than  it  takes  to  write  the  tale  the  alley  was  his.  My  beautiful 
white  alley  !  I  was  but  seven  years  old  and  I  wept  bitterly.  I 
wonder  whether  "  le  petit  Jules,"  if  he  is  yet  alive,  remembers 
how  he  avenged  Waterloo  that  day  in  his  victory  over  the  English 
boy.  I  don't  suppose  that  he  often  plays  marbles  now,  but  if  he  is 
yet  alive,  I  feel  sure  that  his  many  talents  have  led  him  to  great 
successes  in  all  his  endeavours,  whatever  they  may  have  been. 

Many  merry  days  we  spent  among  the  trees  and  statues  of  those 
gardens,  and  often  on  a  sunny  morning  we  could  see  the  old  King, 
Louis  Philippe,  pacing  the  terrace  fronting  the  river.  He  used 


32  Memories 

generally  to  wear  a  long  grey  great-coat  with  a  huge  steeple  hat 
covering  the  famous  Poire* — an  astute,  none-too-reliable  old  man. 
He  never  had  but  one  companion  on  his  walks — probably  General 
Baudrand,  his  most  familiar  friend — perhaps  Guizot  or  some  minister 
— talking  earnestly,  stopping  every  now  and  then  to  enforce  a  point 
with  appropriate  gesticulations.  Hatching  plots,  Spanish  marriage 
for  Montpensier,  or  some  other  villainy  ?  Probably.  But  that  old 
grey  coat  covered  a  King,  and  we  looked  at  it  with  awe. 

As  might  be  expected  in  the  case  of  a  King  whose  own  people 
admitted  that  the  one  thing  he  lacked  was  dignity,  his  Court  seems 
to  have  been  the  shoddiest  affair  that  could  be  imagined  ;  we  used 
to  hear  many  stories  of  its  vulgarities.  Old  Lady  Sandwich,  grand- 
mother of  the  present  earl,  spent  much  Irish  wit  upon  it.  Her 
descriptions  of  the  bourgeois  courtiers  were  inimitable.  She  hap- 
pened to  go  to  an  audience  just  about  the  time  that  there  was  so 
much  fuss  about  poor  Queen  Pomare — the  ex-Queen  of  Tahiti. 
The  equerry  who  was  to  announce  her  asked  the  English  lady's 
name. 

"  La  Comtesse  de  Sandwich." 

"  Pardon,  Madame,  je  n'ai  pas  bien  compris." 

"  La  Comtesse  de  Sandwich." 

"  Mille  pardons,  Madame — mais  ces  noms  anglais  sont  si  diffi- 
ciles." 

The  man  was  evidently  determined  to  be  insolent,  but  Lady 
Sandwich  turned  the  tables  on  him  by  saying  with  a  laugh  : 

"  Mon  Dieu  !  Monsieur,  dites  done  la  Reine  Pomare  !  " 

That  smothered  him — everybody  laughed,  and  she  stalked  into 
the  presence  majestic  and  triumphant. 

Another  time  at  a  court  ball,  she  had  struggled  through  the  shabby 
crowd  to  the  buffet  and  got  herself  an  ice,  when  a  big  hand  snatched 
it  from  her  and  from  the  mouth  that  belonged  to  the  hand  there 
issued,  "  Enfoncee  la  petite  mere  !  "  She  turned  round,  furious — 
it  was  her  bootmaker  in  the  garb  of  the  Garde  Nationale.  He  had 
only  seen  her  back,  so  had  not  recognized  her.  When  he  did 
see ! 

*  The  caricaturists  used  to  make  famous  fun  of  Louis  Philippe's  head,  with 
its  hair  brushed  up  in  a  sort  of  cone  that  made  the  stem  of  the  pear. 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouville  33 


Of  the  Royal  Family  in  the  Tuileries  there  were  two  members 
at  whom  nobody  sneered,  of  whom  nobody  spoke  an  evil  word — • 
Queen  Amelie  and  the  Due  d'Aumale.  Her  goodness  and  dignity 
won  universal  respect  and  admiration.  Of  the  Due  d'Aumale  I 
shall  have  a  word  to  say  elsewhere.  As  for  the  rest,  there  was  no 
great  halo  of  majesty  about  them.  The  wily  old  fox  himself  was 
distrusted  where  he  was  not  hated.  The  Legitimists  spoke  of  him 
as  the  very  incarnation  of  the  Revolution,  like  his  father  figalite, 
a  traitor  to  his  King  and  to  his  caste.  How  dared  he  call 
himself  "  King  of  the  French  "  when  his  cousin  was  the  lawful 
"  King  of  France?  "  The  sons,  Nemours,  Joinville,  Montpensier, 
I  used  to  hear  spoken  of  with  scant  respect — no  great  harm  about 
them ;  but  poor  creatures,  commanding  neither  regard  nor 
affection  ;  nobody  seemed  to  associate  with  them  or  to  wish  their 
friendship.  When  I  came  to  know  them  later  in  life  in  this 
country  I  understood  the  talk  to  which  I  had  listened  as  a  child. 

The  death  of  the  Due  d' Orleans  excited  sympathy  from  its  tragic 
character,  besides  which  he  like  the  Due  d'Aumale,  but  in  a  lesser 
degree,  had  earned  some  credit  in  the  Algerian  campaign.  I  can 
just  remember  the  horror  with  which  the  news  of  the  fatal  accident 
when  he  was  thrown  from  his  carriage,  between  Paris  and  Neuilly, 
was  received.  It  was  in  1842,  just  seventy-three  years  ago  ! 

My  father's  many  accomplishments — music,  painting,  languages — 
made  him  welcome  beyond  the  usual  run  of  foreigners  in  French 
society.  He  was,  moreover,  wonderfully  well-read  hi  the  old 
memoirs  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  and  quite  an 
authority  on  historic  French  portraits.  So  much  so  that  when 
I  once  said  to  him  that  I  felt  sure  that  if  he  were  to  find  himself 
transported  back  to  one  of  the  famous  salons  of  those  times  he  would 
know  almost  all  the  people  by  sight,  his  answer  was,  "  Upon  my  word, 
I  believe  I  should." 

The  society  of  the  Faubourg  n  the  early  forties  must  have  been 
very  interesting ;  there  were  so  many  people  still  living  who  could 
talk  as  eye-witnesses  of  the  horrors  of  the  great  Revolution  :  at 
the  time  of  our  sojourning  in  France  there  was  less  interval 
separating  us  from  the  Terreur  than  there  is  between  to-day  and 
the  Crimean  War. 

VOL.  i  3 


34  Memories 

A  man  of  seventy  years  in  1842  was  twenty  years  of  age  when 
the  King  was  murdered  ;  yet  it  seems  difficult  to  believe  now 
that,  as  a  child,  I  often  listened,  my  hair  almost  on  end,  to  men 
and  women  telling  how  they  had  seen  their  nearest  and  dearest 
led  off  in  the  tumbrils  to  the  shambles  of  Monsieur  de  Paris,  and 
recounting  the  miracles  by  which  they  themselves  had  escaped. 
There  were  many  such.  Indeed,  the  Duchesse  d'Angouleme 
herself — the  woman  of  so  many  tears  that  to  her  dying  day  in  1851 
her  poor  eyes  suffered  from  the  chronic  weeping  known  as  gutta 
lachrymans — who  as  a  child  had,  with  her  unhappy  mother,  gone 
through  the  miseries  of  the  Conciergerie,  and  seen  the  King  and 
Queen,  both  her  parents  led  away  to  the  scaffold,  was  living,  though 
not  in  France,  and  my  father  knew  her  well — in  all  respects  a 
wonderful  woman,  of  whom  Napoleon  said  that  she  was  "  the  only 
man  in  the  family." 

It  is  now  the  fashion  to  laugh  at  the  story  that  Robespierre, 
minded  to  marry  her,  sought  an  interview  with  her  in  prison. 
She,  warned  beforehand,  maintained  a  dead  silence,  refusing  to 
utter  a  word,  and  he  left  the  room,  banging  the  door  and  exclaiming, 
"  Begueule  comme  toute  sa  famille."  My  father,  who  had  ex- 
ceptional relations  with  the  old  French  Legitimists,  firmly  believed 
that  this  really  happened,  and  he  had  good  reason  for  his  faith. 
Of  people  whom  I  actually  knew  and  who  had  survived  the 
Revolution,  several  were  in  various  ways  notable. 

At  Trouville  we  became  very  intimate  with  the  family  of  the 
Marquis  de  Chaumont  Quitry.  The  two  sons,  Felix  and  Odon, 
were  splendid  young  men  who,  among  others,  made  the  place 
gay,  and  on  a  fine  evening  they  would  carry  out  their  trompes  de 
chasse  and  make  the  rocks  ring  with  the  "  Hallali,"  the  "  Rendez- 
vous des  Chasseurs,"  and  other  fanfares,  to  the  great  joy  of  us 
children. 

The  old  Marquis  had  been  a  great  figure  among  the  emigres. 
When  still  little  more  than  a  boy  he  had  contrived  to  make  his 
escape  from  the  Terreur  with  his  young  wife,  and  landed  in  England 
with  a  few  pounds  in  his  pocket.  Many  friends  were  eager  to  help 
him,  but  he  was  as  proud  as  his  ancestor,  Robert  de  Chaumont, 
the  knight  of  the  First  Crusade,  and  he  would  accept  nothing. 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouville  35 


With  the  little  money  that  he  had  he  bought  cloth,  thread,  scissors, 
needles,  and  whalebone,  and  set  up  with  the  Marquise  as  a  stay- 
maker  somewhere  in  Soho — a  hero,  if  ever  there  was  one — and  it 
became  the  fashion  for  fine  ladies  to  have  their  stays  made  by  the 
noble  descendant  of  Crusaders  whose  pedigree  could  be  traced 
back  to  Charlemagne. 

There  was  another  wizened  little  old  gentleman,  whose  name 
I  have  forgotten,  who  used  to  tell  us  anecdotes  of  the  straits  to 
which  he  was  put  during  his  life  in  London ;  but  after  all,  it  might 
have  been  worse,  and  he  was  able  to  feed  himself  for  very  little 
money.  In  the  cheap  slum  in  which  he  lived  there  used  to  appear 
every  morning  a  man  with  little  pieces  of  meat  on  skewers;  for 
two  or  three  pence  you  could  obtain  "  des  petites  portions,"  quite 
enough  for  a  meal,  "  et  ma  foi !  ca  n'etait  pas  trop  mauvais ;  $a 
s'appelle  Kami."  He  was  dealing  with  the  cat's-meat  man ! 

I  used  often  to  be  taken  to  see  the  venerable  Marquise  du  Mesnil, 
who  had  been  lady-in-waiting  to  Marie  Antoinette.  The  old 
lady  lived  in  a  wonderful  apartment  full  of  glorious  old  furniture, 
Gobelins  tapestry,  Sevres  china,  vernis  Martin,  fans  and  pictures, 
memorials  of  the  old  Court  which  would  fetch  a  king's  ransom 
to-day.  I  sometimes  wondered  whether  the  windows  of  those 
rooms  had  ever  been  opened  since  the  house  was  built,  for  the  air 
was  thick  with  a  peculiar  musty,  stuffy,  mousey  smell,  over  which 
neither  musk  nor  verveine  could  prevail.  Here  she  sat  bolt  upright 
with  a  priceless  snuffbox  in  her  wizened  hand,  telling  tales  which 
made  me  gasp  with  terror,  until  I  could  almost  see  Judith  carrying 
the  bleeding  head  out  of  the  tapestry  in  the  boudoir  to  the  music 
of  the  carmagnole  in  the  street  below. 

At  the  Musee  Carnavalet,  or  looking  at  the  Princess  de  Lam- 
balle's  little  pink  slipper  at  the  Cluny,  I  am  reminded  of  that  house 
of  fear  from  which  I  used  to  escape  trembling,  but  to  which,  such 
was  its  weird  fascination,  I  always  used  to  beg  to  be  taken  every 
time  my  people  went  to  visit  there.  The  old  lady  was  always  very 
kind  to  the  little  boy  who  never  quite  knew  whether  he  feared  or 
loved  her,  but  who  had  a  lurking  suspicion  that  she  must  be  some 
relation  of  that  fairy  who  was  not  asked  to  the  christening. 

A  great  pleasure  on  our  homeward  walk  from  the  Rive  Gaiich 
VOL.  i  3* 


36  Memories 

was  to  be  allowed,  after  recrossing  the  river,  to  go  through  the 
Place  du  Carrousel,  between  the  Louvre  and  the  Tuileries,  not 
then  the  magnificent,  dull  and  highly  respectable  space  that  it 
now  is,  but  a  regular  fair,  with  all  sorts  of  cheap  booths,  where 
dogs  and  cats  and  monkeys,  many  strange  beasts,  birds  from 
over-sea  islands,  parrots  and  fowls  with  gaudy  plumage,  snakes, 
tortoises,  cheap  and  entrancing  sham  jewellery  and  rubbish  were 
for  sale.  It  was  very  picturesque,  very  smelly  and  very  dirty, 
the  screams  of  the  macaws,  the  barking  of  the  dogs,  and  the  cries 
of  the  vendors  made  the  day  noisome  and  hideous,  but  we  youngsters 
loved  it  with  all  its  filth,  and  the  present  spick-and-spanness  is  no 
compensation  for  the  magnets  of  attraction  that  have  been 
swept  away. 

I  wonder  where  these  sweepings  agglomerate  into  life  again 
There  must  be  some  place  where  the  humble  piou-piou  buys  a 
cheap  ring  for  his  lady-love,  some  place  where  the  marchand  de 
coco  tinkles  his  bell  among  the  crowd,  where  the  distressful  person 
who  earns  his  living  by  picking  up  cigar-ends,  now  partially  ruined 
by  the  cigarette  craze  and  the  end  of  snuff-taking,  can  ply  his 
trade,  and  the  cries  of  the  old-clothes  man  and  the  dealer  in  stale 
fruit  may  be  heard,  some  place  from  which  modern  ideas  will  drive 
them  once  more  into  the  wilderness  ;  for  after  all,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  picturesque  charms  of  Petticoat  Lane  are  hardly  in 
harmony  with  the  sedateness  of  an  improving  neighbourhood,  let 
alone  a  great  architectural  quadrangle  separating  two  palaces,  one, 
alas  !  now  gone  for  ever. 

There  were  other  walks — the  Jardins  des  Plantes,  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne,  and  so  many  pleasant  expeditions.  But  what  I  grew  to 
love  most,  as  the  years  rolled  on,  were  the  quaint  old  nooks  and 
corners  that  we  used  to  come  upon  in  remote  and  unexpected 
places,  remnants  of  the  old  Paris  of  the  Trois  Mousquetaires — de- 
lightful people  ! — curiously  gabled  streets  where  the  oil  lanterns 
still  swung  from  wires  fastened  to  the  houses  on  either  side,  places 
just  fit  for  rufflers  like  d'Artagnan,  Athos,  Porthos,  Aramis, 
swaggering  hand  on  hilt ;  dark,  mysterious,  labyrinthine  quarters, 
very  primitive  and  no  doubt  very  unhygienic ;  but  then  you  cannot 
have  everything. 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouville  37 

One  not  very  judicious  outing  I  remember  when  I  was  seven 
years  old,  and  a  sentimental  tutor  from  Demler's  school,  to  which 
we  were  sent,  took  several  of  his  pupils,  myself  among  them,  to  the 
Morgue  to  see  the  corpse  of  a  girl  who  had  been  murdered — stabbed 
to  death — by  her  sweetheart.  It  was  a  horrid  place,  that  old 
Morgue,  where  the  dead  bodies  were  laid  out  naked  on  marble  slabs 
with  a  tiny  trickle  of  water  playing  upon  them,  like  salmon  \in 
a  fishmonger's  shop,  and  their  poor  rags  of  clothing  hung  damp, 
empty  and  melancholy  from  the  ceiling.  The  sight  almost  made 
me  sick  and  fed  me  with  nightmares  for  weeks. 

One  of  my  father's  best  friends  in  Paris  was  the  old  Duchesse 
de  Rauzan.  She  had  recently  built  herself  a  house  at  Trouville 
m  the  sands  near  the  mouth  of  the  river.  Trouville  was  then  a 
tiny  fishing  village.  The  only  other  house  besides  that  of  the 
Duchesse  was  one  built  close  to  hers  by  Doctor,  afterwards  Sir 
Joseph,  Olliffe,  the  physician  to  the  English  Embassy.  The 
Duchesse  was  anxious  to  get  a  few  of  her  friends  to  camp  for  the 
summer  in  the  fishermen's  cottages  and  make  up  a  pleasant  coterie. 
Amongst  others,  she  persuaded  my  father  to  join  the  party.  One 
day  my  father  had  taken  me  with  him  to  call  on  the  Duchesse, 
to  inquire  further  before  deciding,  and  as  we  were  sitting  there, 
a  footman  announced  "  Monsieur  le  Docteur  Billard." 

"  What  a  piece  of  luck !  "  said  the  Duchesse.  "  Monsieur 
Billard  is  the  Trouville  doctor,  so  you  will  be  able  to  ask  him  all 
about  it." 

Questioned,  Billard  answered,  "  Monsieur,  Trouville  est  un  trou  !  " 
and  went  into  fits  of  laughter  at  the  fullness  of  his  own  wit. 

The  answer,  however,  did  not  suit  the  Duchesse's  book,  so  the 
poor  doctor  was  promptly  snubbed  and  told  not  to  talk  nonsense. 
I  was  destined  to  see  a  good  deal  of  that  learned  man  of  pills  and 
noxious  draughts  in  the  next  four  years,  and  he  became  one  of  my 
most  intimate  enemies.  He  was  a  primitive,  and  so  far  as  I  was 
concerned  he  had  but  one  remedy,  a  horrible  decoction  of  gum 
arabic  and  sugar,  called  strop  de  gomme,  which  presumably 
was  intended  to  glue  together  any  little  portions  of  the  human 
organization  which  might  have  got  out  of  joint,  and  was  his  panacea 
for  all  ailments  except  the  toothache  ;  for  that  he  had  a  dreadful 


38  Memories 

instrument  of  torture  called  a  German  key — upon  me  he  experi- 
mented with  both. 

He  was  a  humorist :  "  N'ayez  pas  peur,  mon  petit  ami ;  nous 
aliens  guerir  $a  avec  un  peu  de  baume  d'acier."  In  went  the 
"  baume  d'acier  "  into  my  mouth,  and  with  a  great  wrench  out  came 
the  tooth.  Howling  with  pain,  rage  and  indignation  at  having 
been  tricked,  I  wreaked  an  inadequate  revenge  upon  M.  Billard's 
shins.  But  this  is  forestalling  events.  In  spite  of  the  doctor's 
wit,  the  Duchesse  easily  talked  over  my  father,  and  the  result  was 
five  most  happy  summers  in  the  brightest  of  surroundings. 

And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  one  fine  day  in  1842  we  all  embarked 
on  the  railway,  then  a  very  new  institution,  which  went  no  further 
than  Rouen,  where  we  slept,  and  on  the  following  morning  two 
huge  yellow  diligences,  which  my  father  had  chartered  to  carry 
us  and  our  fortunes  to  the  Norman  coast,  were  standing  outside  the 
old-fashioned  inn.  My  father,  my  grandmother,  two  aunts,  my 
two  brothers  and  myself,  besides  a  German  tutor  and  a  white 
poodle,  made  up  the  crew. 

Greatly  hindered  was  the  packing  of  the  crazy  old  coaches  by 
that  nondescript,  motley  crowd  that  used  to  fill  an  inn-yard  on 
those  occasions,  a  crowd  quite  unknown  to  the  traveller  of  to-day, 
long  since  as  extinct  as  the  great  auk,  all  shouting,  swearing  and 
spitting,  all  giving  different  opinions,  with  much  gesticulation, 
as  to  what  trunk  should  be  placed  where,  in  unison  only  when  the 
question  of  pourboires  turned  up,  in  unison  then — not  in  harmony. 

Off  at  last !  The  great  lumbering  diligences  rattling  over  the 
cobble  stones  of  the  glorious  old  cathedral  city,  stopping  now  and 
then  for  pack-thread  repairs  to  the  harness,  the  coachman  cracking 
a  long  whip,  the  stick  made  of  twisted  willow  and  garnished  with 
red  cotton  tassels  to  match  those  on  his  horn,  which  he  from  time 
to  time  tootled  distractingly,  shouting  at  his  horses,  the  near  leader, 
a  favourite,  being  addressed  lovingly  as  "  Coco,"  the  off  leader 
held  up  to  contempt  as  a  "  sacred  canary-bird,"  and  the  wheelers 
being  left  to  jog  on  in  peace  as  the  spirit  moved  them,  nibbling 
with  fond  kisses  at  one  another's  ears,  and  all  four  merrily  jingling 
their  bells. 

It  was  a  weary  journey,  and  we  were  all  very  tired,  hungry, 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouvillc  39 

cross  and  scratchy  (for  the  straw  in  the  bottom  of  the  diligence 
harboured  a  colony  of  greedy  fleas),  when  we  rolled  along  the  quay 
in  state  and  finally  drew  up  at  the  chemist's  shop,  kept  by  one 
Madame  Gamard,  the  upper  floors  of  which  we  were  to  occupy. 

It  was  a  mean  old  house,  at  the  entrance  to  a  curly  street,  the 
back  windows  of  which  overlooked  a  butcher's  shambles,  where 
every  morning  at  daybreak  bovine  sacrifices  took  place,  a  gruesome 
sight,  which  the  German  tutor  used  to  wake  us  up  to  witness. 
He  would  not.  have  missed  a  death-blow  or  a  groan  for  anything. 
He  revelled  in  blood  like  Ivan  the  Terrible.  If  only,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  cruel  Tsar,  it  had  been  human  blood,  one  felt  that  his 
treat  would  have  been  complete.  At  the  back  of  the  house 
slaughter;  in  the  front  drugs  and  potions  hi  wonderfully  inscribed 
gallipots,  interspersed  with  fly-blown  caramels  and  sugared  almonds 
almost  as  nauseous  as  the  salts  and  senna. 

Only  a  maid  and  a  cook,  with  my  nurse  and  my  father's 
manservant,  came  with  us  from  Paris,  so  as  we  were  a  largish 
party,  my  grandmother  had  to  engage  two  additional  women 
selected  from  the  local  talent.  Her  star  was  in  the  ascendant 
when  for  one  of  them  her  choice  fell  upon  Marie  Letac — and  here 
I  am  at  once  met  by  a  difficulty.  How  to  spell  the  name  ?  As 
no  member  of  the  Letac  family  had  ever  been  taught  to  read  or 
write,  such  superfluous  accomplishments  not  being  the  fashion  at 
Trouville,  the  spelling  was  a  matter  of  debate.  Should  the  name 
end  with  a  c,  or  que,  or  cque,  or  ques,  or  cques  ?  I  take  the  line  of 
least  resistance  and  adopt  the  final  c. 

Marie  was  a  dear,  rosy-faced,  good-humoured,  very  plump  person 
of  some  forty  years — snuff  her  one  dissipation,  her  one  extrava- 
gance. How  she  managed  to  stow  away  so  much  was  a  mystery  ; 
a  large,  flat  nose  and  the  stains  on  her  apron  would  account  for 
some  of  it,  but  surely  not  for  all.  Her  union  with  a  thin,  red-haired, 
weasel-faced  carpenter  had  been  blessed  by  a  numerous  family, 
obviously  hardy  annuals.  She  was  a  great  character,  but  when 
she  came  back  the  following  year  from  Paris,  whither  she  had 
insisted  on  accompanying  us,  she  became  a  notable  authority 
touching  the  glories  of  the  capital,  upon  which  she  would  descant 
to  Weasel-face  and  a  select  circle  of  commeres,  listening  open 


40  Memories 

mouthed,  with  their  hands  folded  under  their  aprons  upon  their 
ample  stomachs.  What  struck  her  most  in  Paris  was  the  beauty 
of  the  potatoes.  "  Parlez-moi  des  pommes  de  terre  de  Paris  ! 
C'est  si-z-aimable  a  cuir."  Of  the  servants'  quarters  in  a  Paris 
house  she  did  not  approve  so  highly,  and  no  wonder,  for  they  were 
wretched  dens  under  the  roof,  often  not  weathertight.  She  some- 
times acted  as  my  nurse,  and  I  can  hear  her  now,  after  bidding  me 
good  night,  saying,  "  Ou's'qu'il  est  le  parapluie  ? — aliens  nous 
coucher !  " 

One  fine  day  there  came  to  Trouville  a  travelling  dentist  and 
quack,  a  sort  of  Dr.  Dulcamara,  who  established  his  cart  on  the  quai 
near  the  fish  market.  He  announced  himself  as  "La  Gloire  de  la 
Science,"  the  favourite  medicine-man  and  confidant  of  the  Emperor 
of  Russia  and  the  other  Crowned  Heads  of  Europe.  He  was 
dressed  in  an  old  ragged  blue  military  coatee  with  scarlet  worsted 
epaulettes,  dirty  white  breeches  and  top-boots.  On  his  head 
rested  the  dignity  of  a  huge  cocked  hat  with  a  tall  tricolor  plume. 
He  carried  a  gigantic  sword,  and  his  warlike  appearance  was  en- 
hanced by  a  pair  of  phenomenal  black  moustachios.  In  attendance 
upon  him  were  a  performer  on  the  key-bugle  and  a  pitre,  or  jack- 
pudding,  whose  business  it  was  at  the  psychological  moment  to 
bang  a  big  drum  and  crastTa  pair  of  cymbals  in  order  to  drown  the 
howls  of  the  victims  of  dentistry. 

Marie  Letac,  who  had  been  suffering  from  toothache,  was  wild  to 
go  and  consult  the  "  Glory  of  Science."  My  aunt  promised  to 
pay  the  fee,  so  off  she  went  and  mounted  the  learned  doctor's 
cart.  A  little  while  later  we  went  out  and  met  Marie  Letac  with  a 
duster  before  her  mouth,  bleeding  profusely,  crying  with  pain,  yet 
half  laughing  at  her  own  plight — one  might  almost  say  weeping 
merrily. 

"  Well,"  said  my  aunt,  "  so  you  have  had  it  out  ?  " 

"  Seven  of  them,"  blurted  out  Marie. 

"  Seven  !     Impossible  !  " 

"  Oh  !  du  moment  que  c'est  mademoiselle  qui  regale  !  "  and  with 
that  she  went  off  bleeding  but  content. 

The  man  of  pills,  potions,  and  forceps  did  a  roaring  trade  that 
day  ;  the  drum  and  cymbals  were  never  idle,  and  there  was  a  great 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouville  41 


crowd  of  sailors  and  fishwives,  standing  unwearied  for  many  hours, 
happy  in  the  enjoyment  of  an  exhibition  which  was  free,  and  in  the 
contemplation  of  the  pain  of  their  friends  and  neighbours. 

I  think,  though  it  is  anticipating  by  a  good  many  years,  that  I 
must  finish  the  story  of  our  relations  with  Marie  Letac.  She  re- 
mained with  us  all  the  time  we  were  in  France,  and  was  heart- 
broken when  we  left — that  was  in  1846.  We  spent  the  summer 
holidays  of  that  year  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  and  one  day,  as  we  were  all 
sitting  at  luncheon,  there  came  a  ring  at  the  bell,  and  we  were  told 
that  there  was  a  French  beggar-woman  who  wanted  to  see  my 
aunt.  She  ran  out  of  the  room  and  presently  came  back  with  Marie, 
travel-stained,  tired,  footsore,  and  almost  worn  out,  but  crying  for 
very  happiness.  She  said  that  she  could  bear  the  separation  no 
]onger,  so  she  had  gone  to  Havre,  taken  boat  for  Southampton,  and 
walked  all  the  way  to  Tunbridge  Wells.  How  she  managed  to  find 
the  road,  not  knowing  a  word  of  English  and  almost  penniless,  was 
a  puzzle.  She  had  an  addressed  envelope  and  that  was  all,  but  here 
and  there  she  met  with  a  kind  person  who  knew  a  little  French  and 
helped  her,  and  so  at  last  the  faithful  creature  reached  us.  She  did 
not  stay  very  long,  for  she  had  her  husband  and  the  hardy  annuals 
to  look  after,  and  she  was  sent  back  to  Normandy,  this  time 
travelling  decently  and  in  comfort. 

The  following  summer  we  went  back  to  Trouville,  and  of  course 
she  came  to  be  with  us.  After  that  we  never  saw  her  again.  But 
every  Yuletide  there  came  a  letter  to  my  aunt,  written  by  the 
village  scribe  in  pompous  language,  beginning,  "  Je  croirais  manquer 
a  mon  devoir  si  je  ne  m'empressais  pas,"  etc.,  etc.,  with  many  good 
wishes  and  felicitations.  At  last,  after  many  years,  there  was  a 
sad  Christmas  which  brought  no  letter.  Poor  Marie  "  avait  manque* 
a  son  devoir. '  She  was  dead. 

Of  Trouville  Alexandre  Dumas  pere  was  the  Columbus,  la  Mere 
Oseraie  the  George  Washington.  What  the  one  discovered,  the 
other  made.  The  "  Bras  d'Or,"  the  solitary  little  inn  over  which 
Madame  Oseraie  shed  the  very  sunshine  of  kindness,  became  famous 
as  a  summer  resort  for  the  long-haired  denizens  of  the  Quartier 
Latin  of  Paris.  It  was  quite  humble  and  very  cheap,  but  it  was 


42  Memories 

specklessly  clean,  and  the  cooking  was  undeniable,  for  the  hostess 
was  a  born  cordon  bleu.  The  elder  Dumas  was  no  mean  judge,  and 
when  he  gave  her  his  blessing,  her  omelettes  were  said  to  be  a  dream, 
her  soupc  aux  choux  a  revelation.  The  great  man  had  spoken,  and 
the  "  Bras  d'Or  "  became  a  sort  of  suffragan  headquarters  for  some 
of  the  painters  of  the  Barbizon  school,  and  a  small  gang  of  imitative 
rapins  who  followed  in  their  wake.  It  suited  their  meagre  purses  ; 
for  three  or  four  francs  a  day  they  were  lodged  and  fed  upon  the  fat 
of  the  land,  with  bread  and  cider  a  discretion. 

As  for  Madame  Oseraie  herself,  round,  fat,  and  fubsy,  with  a  most 
genial  smile  and  welcome,  she  looked  as  if  she  had  been  made  to 
suckle  the  world  on  the  milk  of  human  kindness.  The  good  inn  was 
never  empty,  and  the  guests  went  back  to  Paris  all  the  better  for 
the  rest,  with  a  dip  in  the  sea,  fresh,  strong  air  and  good  food,  carrying 
a  satchel  full  of  sketches  to  work  upon  in  their  cock-loft  ateliers  till 
the  time  should  come  round  for  another  happy  summer  holiday. 
But  after  1842  no  more  "  Bras  d'Or  "  for  the  poor  rapins !  The 
grandees  from  Paris  had  taken  possession  of  Trouville  ;  Madame 
Oseraie  not  unreasonably  raised  her  prices,  and  the  poor,  long- 
haired, imperfectly-washed,  but  very  merry  ne'er-do-weels  must 
move  on  to  some  other  and,  let  us  hope,  equally  happy  hunting 
ground. 

When  the  great  people  came  they  had  perforce  to  accept  the 
simple  life.  The  fisher  folk  furbished  up  their  cottages  according 
to  their  humble  ideas  of  aesthetic  extravagance,  and  their  lodgers, 
who  had  left  behind  them  rooms  rich  with  Gobelins  and  Beauvais 
tapestry,  furnished  with  masterpieces  by  Riesener,  Cameri  and 
Gouthieres,  had  to  content  themselves  with  hideous  cheap  wall- 
papers the  colour  of  which  came  off  in  dust  upon  their  coats  and 
gowns,  and  with  such  poor  sticks  and  stocks  as  the  modest  homes 
could  afford.  What  became  of  the  owners,  in  what  troglodytes' 
dwellings  they  lay  hidden,  counting  over  their  little  harvest,  is  more 
than  any  man  can  say. 

One  or  two  artists,  a  little  less  hairy  and  a  little  better  off  than  the 
old  patrons  of  the  inn,  came  with  the  mighty.  There  were  the  two 
brothers  Mozin,  Charles  and  Theodore,  the  one  a  clever  painter, 
the  other  a  musician,  and  Vogel,  beloved  of  the  none-too-critical 


Frankfort — Trouville — Paris  4  3 


Paris  ladies  for  his  sugary  ballads  all  about  love  and  cottages  and 
despair — songs  as  sweet  and  smooth  as  the  almond-paste  in  a  wedding- 
cake.  They  brought  a  sort  of  mild  aesthetic  leaven  into  the  general 
hotch-potch  ;  the  dandies  copied  their  scarlet  flannel  blouses  and 
their  berets  ;  the  smart  ladies  accepted  their  sketches  and  the 
dedications  of  their  songs,  feeling  that  in  so  doing  they  were  laying 
a  claim  to  a  reputation  for  culture. 

A  vision  of  the  plage  at  Trouville  was  Madame  de  Contades, 
who  came  down  from  Paris  one  year  to  breathe  a  little  health  after 
some  serious  illness.  She  used  to  be  carried  on  to  the  sands  on  a 
canvas  litter  by  two  sturdy  fishermen  in  their  blue  jerseys  and 
knitted  caps,  and  when  she  was  comfortably  established  with  her 
book,  her  fan,  her  parasol,  and  her  bottle  of  smelling-salts  or  some 
cunning  essence,  she  would  be  surrounded  by  a  bevy  of  children, 
pages  and  tiny  maids  of  honour,  all  eager  to  render  her  homage  and 
do  her  some  small  service — a  lilliputian  court  quite  as  much  in  love 
with  her  as  the  dandy  moths  that  singed  their  wings  in  her  flame. 

How  beauty  appeals  to  children  !  That  sweet,  pale  face,  framed 
in  soft  brown  curls  like  the  Cenci  of  Guido  Reni,  is  a  fascination 
to  me  to-day  as  it  was  seventy  years  ago  and  more.  She  should 
have  remained  a  tender  invalid ;  but  the  rough  Norman  breezes 
brought  back  the  roses  to  her  cheeks  and  strength  to  her  shapely 
limbs,  and  the  next  I  heard  of  our  beautiful  queen  was  swimming 
a  race  against  another  lady  in  the  Seine  at  Paris.  To  her  lilliputian 
court  this  seemed  an  outrage  of  lese-poesie.  Indeed,  it  was  deemed 
a  little  unusual  at  that  rather  stiff  period. 

The  Lubersacs,  Barbantanes,  Blacas,  followed  the  lead  of  the 
Duchesse  de  Rauzan,  as  should  beseem  daughters  and  sons-in-law. 
Notable  also  was  the  Duchesse  de  Gramont  Caderousse,  with  her 
two  boys,  daily  playfellows  of  ours,  the  second  of  whom  became 
the  famous  viveur,  dandy,  duellist,  and  eccentric  of  the  Second 
Empire — I  shall,  perhaps,  speak  of  him  later.  The  elder  brother 
died  as  a  boy. 

Sunday  was  a  great  day,  when  the  little  street  and  the  plage 
were  quite  alive  with  holiday  folk  who  flocked  in  from  the  neigh- 
bouring farms  and  villages  to  see  the  fine  people  from  Paris.  It 
was  a  very  picturesque  crowd.  Of  course  the  sailor-men  were  all 


44  Memories 

dressed  in  their  best  blue  cloth,  with  their  red  knitted  woollen  caps 
throwing  a  tassel  jauntily  on  one  side.  The  well-to-do  farmers' 
wives  and  daughters  were  very  smart.  Striped  petticoats  coming 
down  a  little  above  the  ankle,  showing  a  neat  little  pair  of  wooden 
sabots,  or  even  leather  shoes ;  black-silk  aprons ;  white  fichus 
folded  over  their  breasts ;  upon  their  heads  the  old,  high  twelfth- 
century  caps,  trimmed  with  lace,  which  our  ladies  said  was  beautiful, 
handed  down  from  mother  to  daughter  for  generations. 

A  few  years  ago  I  was  at  Trouville  once  more  upon  a  Sunday. 
Alas  !  the  old  costumes  were  no  longer  there.  The  present  genera- 
tion of  farmers'  wives  were  all  garbed  and  hatted  in  imitation  of 
Paris  fashions.  It  was  too  sad  !  They  were  a  fine,  strapping, 
healthy  race  of  women,  with  beautiful  skins  and  cheeks  as  rosy  as 
the  apples  of  their  own  orchards.  Some  of  the  girls  were  very  hand- 
some, sweet  and  modest-looking  ;  rather  shy  of  the  foreigners.  It 
may  be  said  that  I  was  not  of  an  age  to  judge,  but  I  was  a  long- 
eared  little  pitcher,  and  I  heard  what  my  elders  said.  The  men 
were  not  so  picturesquely  attired,  but  there  was  a  touch  of  local 
character  about  their  get-up  also. 

A  great  ally  of  ours  was  a  certain  old  Monsieur  Pommier  (I  don't 
suppose  he  was  more  than  forty,  but  to  us  he  seemed  a  Methuselah), 
who  always  came  to  see  us  dressed  in  his  Sunday  best.  A  brown 
coat  as  stiff  as  iron,  and  as  uncomfortable  as  a  strait  waistcoat,  with 
a  ridiculous  little  pah"  of  tails  about  six  inches  long  sticking  out 
behind  almost  at  right  angles  to  his  waist ;  a  phenomenally  high 
collar  reaching  to  his  ears,  a  tall  stock  above  a  flowered  white 
waistcoat ;  on  his  reddish,  close-cropped  head  a  black  beaver  hat, 
brushed  the  wrong  way  ;  in  his  hand  a  stick  with  the  thick  end 
downwards,  held  by  a  leathern  thong  at  the  small  end ;  tiny  side- 
whiskers,  and  a  face  and  nose  shining  from  recent  soapsuds.  He 
was  the  type  of  the  prosperous  Normandy  farmers  and  cider-makers 
of  his  day.  If  they  were  proverbially  a  close-fisted  race,  they  knew 
how  to  be  hospitable,  and  there  was  an  old-world  courtesy  which 
pierced  through  then:  roughness  and  was  most  attractive.  To  us 
they  were  very  kindly,  and  the  memory  of  them  is  still  pleasant. 

It  was  a  motley  crowd  that  came  to  mix  with  the  grand  ladies, 
the  dandies,  the  nounous,  the  little  bare-legged  children  making 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouvilie  45 


sand-castles,  watching  an  itinerant  Polichinelle  or  scrambling 
about  the  mussel-clad  Roches  Noires  under  the  careful  eyes  of 
governesses  and  tutors. 

But  gay  and  bright  and  happy  as  the  Sunday  was  out  of  doors, 
inside  our  house  it  was  dreary  and  penitential.  My  grandmother, 
a  Leslie-Anstruther  by  birth,  had  inherited  all  the  bigotry  of  the 
old  Covenanters,  and  under  her  rule,  kind  and  loving  as  it  was  on 
week-days,  the  Sabbath  was  day  on  which  no  expression  of  joy 
was  permitted.  Many  hours  were  consumed  by  her  hi  various 
forms  of  deadly  dull  worship.  Even  we,  mere  children,  had  to  sit 
through  a  service  which  was  made  as  forbidding  as  it  could  be. 
She  began  with  the  morning  service  read  from  beginning  to  end, 
including  the  priestly  absolution,  which  she  delivered  with  peculiar 
unction  ;  then  came  the  Litany,  which  the  professional  cleric  omits 
when  the  morning  prayer  has  been  given  in  its  entirety  ;  then  the 
Communion  service.  By  that  time  most  performers  would  have 
been  exhausted — not  so  my  grandmother ;  she  proceeded  to 
deliver  one  of  Blair's  sermons,  and  woe  be  to  us  if  we  yawned 
or  fidgeted,  or  were  guilty  of  inattention  ! 

I  remember  one  special  Sunday.  I  must  have  been  about  six  years 
old  when  I  was  promoted  to  a  pair  of  trousers  ;  they  were  made  by 
the  village  tailor  out  of  a  hideous  black-and-white  check  horse- 
cloth, very  coarse  and  prickly,  like  the  hair-shirt  of  a  medieval 
saint.  Every  time  I  moved  the  sharp  points  entered  into  my  tender 
flesh ;  to  kneel  was  a  penance,  to  get  up  again  and  sit  down  a 
torture.  My  fidgets  and  groans  could  not  be  restrained  ;  they  were 
a  criminal  interruption,  and  I  was  punished  accordingly,  but  at  any 
rate,  in  order  that  the  punishment  should  be  effective,  the  cruel 
trousers  had  to  be  taken  down,  and  that  was  a  consolation,  though 
only  temporary,  and  not  unmixed  with  a  counter-irritation  of  pain. 
In  these  circumstances  religion  was  what  the  great  Lord  Halifax 
called  "  a  vertu  stuck  with  bristles,  too  rough  for  this  Age." 

In  1845  we  stayed  on  at  Trouvilie  long  after  all  the  other 
summer  visitors  had  fled,  like  the  swallows.  No  one  left  but  the 
fisherfolk  and  ourselves. 

In  the  late  autumn  the  sea  became  leaden,  ugly    cruel-looking. 


46  Memories 

One  stormy  day  when  I  fought  my  way  as  usual  against  the  wind 
down  to  the  deserted  sands,  close  to  where  the  bathing-machines 
were  drawn  up  in  idleness,  I  came  upon  a  group  of  fishermen  carrying 
something  blue  and  limp,  a  belated  bather  whom  they  had  risked 
their  own  lives  to  rescue  from  the  waves  growling  savagely  upon  the 
beach,  lashing  themselves,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  into  a  fury  at  being 
robbed  of  their  prey.  It  was  difficult  to  believe  that  it  was  the  same 
sea  that  a  few  short  weeks  before  had  rippled  so  gently,  kissing  the 
pretty  feet  of  the  paddling  children  !  On  such  days  as  those  I  felt 
very  much  alone  and  longed  to  get  back  to  the  Gardens  of  the 
Tuileries  and  the  merry  games  with  our  little  camarades 

But  there  were  bright  days  in  the  waning  year,  when  we  made 
expeditions  to  neighbouring  farm-houses,  or  tramped  along  the 
frosty  riverside  road  to  the  little  town  of  Touques,  with  its  black- 
and-white  timbered  houses  and  the  picturesque  ruins  of  the  old 
Norman  castle. 

What  a  joy  it  was  when  I  was  about  eight  years  old  to  let  my 
imagination  run  riot,  peopling  the  old  keep  with  visions  of  knights 
and  dames  and  beautiful  Jewesses  !  I  was  in  the  middle  of  reading 
"  Ivanhoe  "  and  here  was  indeed  a  setting  for  the  book.  I  could 
fancy  myself  at  Torquilstone  and  conjure  up  living  pictures  of  the 
Black  Knight,  Front  de  Boeuf,  the  Templar,  Athelstane,  and  Cedric 
the  Saxon.  There  was  a  beautiful  peasant  girl  in  her  high  Norman 
cap,  wandering  down  below  among  the  now  leafless  apple  orchards  ; 
could  she  be  the  Lady  Rowena  ?  And  that  sturdy,  rather  ruffianly 
vagabond  standing  in  the  ancient  archway.  Surely  no  other  than 
Gurth  the  swineherd  !  Phantoms  conjured  up  by  the  Wizard  of  the 
North. 

In  August,  1847,  we  were  once  more  at  Trouville,  and  it  was 
for  the  last  time.  In  former  years  we  had  been  wont  to 
see  more  of  that  romantic  Norman  coast  than  most  people  did  ; 
for  we  were  not  fashionable  :  we  used  to  arrive  in  early  spring, 
long  before  the  orchards  were  brilliant  with  the  bravery  of  the 
apple  blossoms,  and  more  than  once  we  stayed  on  long  after  the 
last  glorious  red  fruits  had  been  gathered  for  the  cider-vats,  when 
the  first  frosts  had  coloured  the  falling  leaves,  and  the  hedges 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouvillc  47 


yielded  no  more  blackberries  with  which  to  smear  our  small  faces. 
This  year  our  stay  was  bounded  by  the  Eton  holidays. 

It  was  a  fateful  month — fateful  for  France — for  it  was  the  month 
in  which  the  Praslin  tragedy  took  place,  a  tragedy  which  might 
perhaps  by  now  have  been  mercifully  forgotten  had  it  not  played 
so  important  a  part  in  the  political  history  of  that  time. 

One  beautiful  summer  day,  when  all  the  little  world  of  Trouville 
was  gathered  together  upon  the  velvety  sands,  the  terrible  news 
arrived.  Two  young  Irish  ladies  came  running  up  to  my  aunts 
weeping  bitterly — almost  in  hysterics.  They  were  great  friends 
of  the  Praslin  family  and  had  just  heard  that  the  poor  Duchess 
had  been  murdered  and  the  Duke  arrested.  I  remember  the 
thrill  of  horror  with  which  the  news  was  received  on  the  plage, 
and  that  thrill  throbbed  through  all  France.  The  Due  de  Praslin 
had  driven  the  first  nail  in  the  coffin  of  the  Orleans  monarchy. 

For  some  five  or  six  years  the  Duke  and  Duchess,  who  had  a 
large  family,  had  had  in  their  service  as  governess  a  certain  Made- 
moiselle de  Luzy.  Of  this  lady  the  Duchess,  with  or  without 
reason,  but  most  probably  with  very  good  reason,  at  any  rate 
so  far  as  the  transfer  of  her  husband's  affections  was  concerned, 
had  become  furiously  jealous  :  so  much  so  that  her  father,  Marsha 
Sebastiani,  insisted  upon  Mademoiselle  de  Luzy's  dismissal.  This, 
however,  did  not  put  an  end  to  the  intimacy,  of  whatever  nature 
it  may  have  been,  between  her  and  the  Duke,  for  it  was  shown 
that  on  the  arrival  of  the  family  in  Paris  from  the  country,  he 
drove  at  once  to  her  house.  That  night  the  murder  was  com- 
mitted. When  the  servants  entered  the  bedroom,  they  had  to 
face  a  sight  so  appalling  that  M.  Delessert,  the  Prefect  of  Police, 
whose  business  made  him  familiar  with  the  horrors  of  crime,  told 
Mr.  Henry  Greville  that  in  all  his  experience  he  had  not  come 
across  so  ghastly  a  spectacle.  There  were  signs  of  a  desperate 
struggle,  for  the  unhappy  Duchess,  a  short  but  stout  woman, 
had  evidently  fought  fiercely  for  her  life. 

Suffice  it  to  say  here  that  the  evidence  against  the  Duke  was 
damning.  A  pistol  known  to  belong  to  him  had  been  used  as 
a  bludgeon,  and  was  clotted  with  blood  and  hair — some  of  the 
hair  was  his  own,  pulled  out  in  the  cruel  fight  !  He  had  opened 


48  Memories 

the  window  in  order  to  excite  the  belief  that  the  crime  was  the 
work  of  burglars  ;  but  it  was  pointed  out  to  him  that  nothin;; 
had  been  stolen,  and  that  a  figure  resembling  his  had  been  seen 
from  the  outside  opening  the  casement — upon  which  he  observed 
that  the  matter  assumed  a  grave  aspect.  He  was  arrested  and 
carried  to  prison,  but  managed  to  take  a  dose  of  poison  which 
proved  insufficient;  a  second  dose  was  smuggled,  as  it  was 
averred,  into  his  cell,  and  of  this  he  died ;  but  there  were  many- 
people  who  believed  that  the  poison  was  a  farce,  and  that  he  was 
spirited  away  to  England,  where  he  is  supposed  to  have  lived  for 
many  years  in  hiding  somewhere  in  the  Lake  district.  The  possi- 
bility of  this  escape  was  strenuously  denied  both  by  M.  Delessert 
and  the  Procureur-General ;  but  it  is  significant  that  the  former 
did  not  himself  see  the  Duke's  body,  although  it  was  his  duty  to 
do  so.  He  was  prevented  by  other  business. 

Mademoiselle  de  Luzy  was  arrested  and  kept  in  solitary  con- 
finement. But  when  she  was  examined  she  gave  her  evidence 
clearly  and  simply.  Nothing  was  elicited  to  show  that  she  was 
particeps  criminis,  or  even  that  her  relations  with  the  Duke  had 
gone  beyond  the  bounds  of  propriety.  She  was  of  course 
released,  and  afterwards  married  very  respectably. 

All  France  was  moved  to  the  core  by  the  horror  of  the  crime  ; 
but  what  aroused  even  more  indignation  than  the  murder  itself 
was,  as  I  well  recollect,  the  widespread  idea  that  for  political 
reasons  there  had  been  a  miscarriage  of  justice  and  that  the 
murderer,  owing  to  his  exalted  position,  had  been  allowed  to 
disappear  scot-free. 

There  were  whisperings  and  mutterings,  and  grave  doubts  ex- 
pressed even  in  high  places  ;  but  in  the  lower  strata  of  society, 
among  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  proletariat,  there  were  sullen, 
ominous  thunder-growls  boding  ill  for  a  government  which  had 
long  since  forfeited  all  claim  to  popularity ;  the  whole  affair  was 
shrouded  in  a  mystery  which  was  more  than  enough  to  excite 
the  minds  of  a  highly  inflammable  people.  Republicans  and 
Socialists  had  for  some  years  been  on  the  war-path  :  now  they 
were  goaded  by  laws  gagging  the  press  and  proscribing  public 
meetings.  These  laws,  initiated  by  Guizot  and  furiously  opposed 


Frankfort — Paris — Trouville  49 

by  Thiers,  brought  about  the  final  crash  ;  the  revolution  broke 
out,  and  on  the  22nd  of  February,  1848,  the  King  and  his  Queen 
were  hounded  out  by  the  mob  of  Paris.  A  few  days  later  a 
slippery  old  gentleman  with  a  curious  pear-shaped  head  and  pro- 
fuse expressions  of  geniality — a  commodity  which  he  always  kept 
in  stock — landed  at  Newhaven.  He  said  he  was  Mr.  Smith. 

Whether  the  Due  de  Praslin  died  in  prison,  a  suicide  as  well 
as  a  murderer,  or  whether  his  flight  was  connived  at  by  the  mighty, 
is  one  of  those  secrets  which  will  remain  hidden  till  the  Day  of 
Judgment.  It  used  to  be  said  that  members  of  his  family  were 
in  the  habit  of  paying  annual  visits  to  him  in  England.  The 
French  authorities  always  scouted  this  idea  ;  but  many  years 
later  facts  came  to  my  knowledge  which  proved  that  one  of  his 
very  near  relations  did  make  a  practice  of  coming  to  England 
periodically,  and  that  during  those  expeditions  he  was  for  the 
most  part  lost  to  the  sight  of  his  friends.  Whither  he  went  no 
one  knew. 

It  is  a  strange  coincidence  that  the  fall  of  the  last  two  monarchies 
in  France — that  of  Louis  Philippe  and  that  of  Louis  Napoleon — 
should  in  each  case  have  been  heralded  by  a  single  murder.  These 
were  crimes  which  stirred  the  wildest  passions,  the  fiercest  and 
most  unthinking  resentments  of  the  mob,  and  however  unjustly, 
the  penalty  for  them  was  paid  by  those  who  had  no  hand  in  them. 


VOL.    I. 


CHAPTER  III 

ETON 

THERE  are  days  in  a  man's  life  which  he  never  forgets  ; 
his  first  day  at  school  is  one  of  them.  My  maiden  appear- 
ance at  Eton  was  in  1846,  sixty-nine  years  ago  at  this  time  of 
writing,  but  that  lovely  day  in  May  is  as  fresh  in  my  memory 
as  if  it  had  been  last  week.  I  was  only  nine  years  old,  but  I 
suppose  that  I  was  rather  impressionable  for  my  time  of  life,  and 
my  young  imagination  had  been  fired  by  the  enthusiasm  of  my 
father  and  many  of  his  friends,  whose  chief  pride  always  had  seemed 
to  lie  in  the  fact  that  they  were  old  "  Eton  fellows." 

Their  stories  of  school  days — chiefly  blood-curdling  tales  of 
scrapes  and  punishments  borne  with  Spartan  fortitude  or  avoided 
by  hair's-breadth  escapes,  the  chief  joys  of  scholastic  memory- 
had  sunk  deeply  into  my  mind,  so  that  Eton  seemed  very  familiar ; 
and  yet  when  I  faced  its  reality,  the  religio  loci  was  a  revelation. 
I  remember  the  mixed  feeling — a  great  joy,  a  shrinking  fear- 
before  the  plunge  into  the  great  unknown ;  the  sorrow  of  leaving 
home,  the  freedom  of  new  wings,  the  exultation  of  life.  I  remember 
the  terror  lest  I  should  be  guilty  of  some  solecism  upon  which 
the  wrath  of  the  gods  of  the  sixth  form  should  fall ;  I  remember 
a  heart  throbbing  as  men's  hearts  might  throb  before  a  battle, 
when  my  father  rang  at  Mr.  John  Hawtrey's*  door  (for  I  was  to 
start  in  lower  school)  and  my  relief  at  the  sight  of  his  and  Mrs. 

*  Mr.  John  Hawtrey  (cousin  of  the  Head  Master)  kept  a  house  at  the  corner 
of  Keate's  Lane  reserved  for  boys  of  the  lower  school.  There  was  no  fagging 
in  his  house — but  his  boys  were  liable  to  outside  fagging.  He  afterwards 
kept  preparatory  schools  at  Slough  and  later  at  Westgate-on-Sea.  He  was 
the  lather  of  Mr.  Charles  Hawtrey,  the  famous  actor. 


Eton  51 

Hawtrey's  kind  faces,  and  of  the  comfortable  matron,  Mrs. 
Paramour,  ample  of  bosom  and  sympathy,  to  whose  care  I  was 
commended  ! 

Then  the  awe  of  being  led  through  the  gate  into  the  school- 
yard with  the  statue  of  the  King-Founder  and  the  entrance  to 
the  cloisters  under  Lupton's  tower,  from  the  ground-floor  room 
on  the  right  of  which  there  issued  the  weird  and  muffled  noises 
of  a  not  unmelodious  flute — sounds  that  were  to  become  very 
familiar  to  me  later  on,  for  the  room  was  occupied  as  a  school- 
room by  dear  old  Herr  Schonerstedt,  professor  of  Hebrew  and 
German,  who,  like  Tityrus  and  Frederic  the  Great,  used  to  solace 
his  leisure  hours,  which  were  many,  with  a  flute. 

Thence  into  the  playing  fields,  in  which  the  elms  planted  in 
Charles  the  First's  time,  then  at  the  zenith  of  their  pride,  now  all 
dead  and  gone,  were  just  putting  forth  their  summer  plumage  ; 
Fellows'  Pond,  with  a  lazy  pike  or  two  basking  on  the  surface  ; 
Poet's  Walk,  Sixth  Form  Bench,  and  above  all,  the  glory  of 
Windsor  Castle,  most  regal  of  palaces,  towering  above  the  Thames. 
How  beautiful  it  all  was,  and  how  romantic  !  The  fairies  must 
have  been  tripping  in  rings  on  the  turf,  the  dryads  tempted  out 
of  their  barken  hiding-places,  the  water-nymphs  making  high 
festival  on  the  silver  flood,  so  radiantly  joyous  was  the  day  ! 

We  lingered  under  the  one  oak  tree  standing  in  lonely  majesty 
on  the  river  bank,  trying  in  vain  to  dip  its  boughs  into  the  ripples 
on  which  the  sunbeams  were  dancing  ;  we  looked  at  Lord  Welles- 
ley's  weeping  willows  (I  wonder  whether  the  planting  of  them 
by  the  great  Duke's  brother  might  have  had  some  dim  connection 
with  St.  Helena).  It  was  delightful  wandering  through  those 
Elysian  fields  in  which  every  tree,  every  corner  was  a  peg  upon 
which  our  elders  could  hang  a  story  of  thirty  years  ago — the  fields 
that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  loved  to  the  end  of  his  days.  We 
were  to  go  to  luncheon  with  the  Head  Master,  my  father's  old 
tutor  and  lifelong  friend.  He  used  often  to  come  and  see  us  in 
the  holidays,  and  so  was  perhaps  not  quite  such  a  figure  of  awe 
to  me  as  he  was  to  most  new  boys. 

But  before  penetrating  into  West  on' s  Yard,  where  the  new 
VOL  i  4* 


52  Memories 

College  buildings  had  recently  been  erected,  we  must  cast  one 
glance  at  the  corner  of  the  playing  fields  known  as  "  Sixpenny  " 
— just  below  what  was  then  Miss  Edgar,  the  dame's,  tumbledown 
old  labyrinth  of  a  house — the  classic  place  for  battles  in  the  past, 
where  I  was  to  see  many  a  famous  fight  in  the  next  few  years. 
From  "  Sixpenny  "  it  was  that  in  1825  the  great  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury's  younger  brother,  Francis  Ashley,  was  carried  home  to  die 
from  exhaustion  after  fighting  with  a  boy  of  the  name  of  Wood 
lor  the  best  part  of  two  hours.  I  witnessed  three  fierce  fights 
that  were  nearly  as  bad,  and  many  lesser  battles,  but  the  subject 
is  only  worth  alluding  to  because  it  is  dead.  There  is  no  fighting 
now,  I  believe  ;  perhaps,  savage  as  it  may  seem  to  say  so,  that 
is  not  altogether  an  advantage.  Dr.  Hawtrey  once  said  to  me, 
"  If  two  boys  have  a  quarrel  I  would  rather  see  them  fight  it  out. 
They  shake  hands  afterwards,  and  become  firm  friends ;  but  this 
grudge-bearing  is  dreadful  and  has  no  end." 

Boys  form  great  friendships  at  school ;  they  also  form  great 
antipathies.  There  was  a  boy  at  Eton,  a  few  years  older  than 
myself,  who  was  an  arch-bully.  For  some  reason  he  bore  me  a 
special  spite  ;  his  methods  of  torture  were  curious  and  ingenious. 
If  I  saw  him  in  the  distance  I  fled.  I  have  heard  that  he  is  a  good, 
gentle,  harmless  old  gentleman,  a  kind  landlord,  a  Chairman  of 
a  Board  of  Guardians,  greatly  respected — but  I  should  still  dread 
to  meet  him. 

Venerable  and  imposing,  very  dear  to  us  who  loved  him  well, 
was  the  figure  of  Edward  Craven  Hawtrey,  the  Head  Master  of 
Eton.  He  was  not  a  handsome  man,  indeed  so  far  as  features 
were  concerned,  he  was  distinctly  the  reverse;  but  he  was  tall 
and  upright,  with  the  dignity  of  a  commander  of  boys  or  men. 
When  he  called  Absence  on  the  Chapel  steps,  dressed  in  his  cassock 
and  doctor's  gown,  his  presence  was  imposing.  When  he  went 
out  walking  his  attire  was  scrupulously  neat,  with  as  much  smart- 
ness as  might  become  a  cleric  of  high  degree.  He  always  wore 
a  frock-coat  with  a  deep  velvet  collar,  with  which  the  high  white 
cravat  of  those  days  and  his  silver  hair,  worn  slightly,  but  not 
unduly  long,  made  a  fine  contrast.  Skilled  "  in  the  nice  conduct 
of  a  clouded  cane,"  he  looked  essentially  a  gentleman,  a  clergyman 


Eton  53 

of  the  best  old  school.     He  was  a  traveller,  a  man  of  the  world 
and  a    linguist,  proficient  in  French,  German  and   Italian,  able 
to  hold  his  own,  and  always  welcome,  in  the  political  and  learned 
society    of   many   continental    cities    and   universities.     His    per 
sonality  was  as  well  known  in  Paris,  Rome,  and  the  great  German 
towns  as  in  London  or  at  Windsor. 

To  be  a  good  head  master  of  Eton  demands  many  qualifica- 
tions. Dr.  Hawtrey  had  them  all ;  he  seemed  born  for  the  post, 
so  admirably  did  he  fit  it.  His  hospitality  was  unbounded,  and 
when  on  a  great  gala  day  like  the  Fourth  of  June  he  welcomed  as 
guests  many  of  the  greatest  people  of  the  kingdom,  it  was  a  lesson 
to  see  the  lofty  yet  kindly  courtesy  with  which  he  maintained  the 
dignity  of  what  he  justly  conceived  to  be  his  great  office.  His 
tall,  stately  figure  stalking  amongst  the  smartly  millinered  ladies 
in  his  little  slip  of  a  garden  was  indeed  princely. 

Later  in  life  I  met  him  in  Paris,  surrounded  by  some  of  the 
most  notable  men  of  the  day,  leaders  of  thought,  who  rejoiced  in 
the  society  of  the  great  head  master,  and  in  listening  to  his  cultured, 
many-sided,  cosmopolitan  talk.  He  was  equally  at  home  in  more 
frivolous  surroundings.  He  was  welcome  everywhere ;  at  a 
gathering  at  Stafford  House  he  would  wander  through  the  famous 
galleries,  a  pet  guest  of  the  great  Duchess  Harriet,  stopped  every 
here  and  there  by  some  reigning  beauty,  eager  to  greet  and  make 
much  of  the  genial  old  man  of  whom  she  had  heard  so  many  kindly 
tales  from  husband  or  brothers,  the  old  boys  whom  he  loved  and 
who  loved  him.  Queen  Victoria  had  the  greatest  regard  for  him, 
and  it  was  his  inspiration  which  induced  Prince  Albert  to  found 
the  Prince  Consort's  prizes  for  modern  languages  at  Eton — a 
princely  boon  as  wise  as  it  was  generous. 

I  was  often  invited  to  his  breakfast  parties,  which  were  interest- 
ing feasts,  for  he  frequently  had  some  man  of  note  staying  with 
him.  More  than  once  I  met  Guizot  there  after  the  collapse  of  the 
monarchy  in  1848 — a  quiet,  grey-haired  old  gentleman  whom  it 
was  difficult  to  imagine  facing  the  stormy  Chamber  with  his  famous 
"  Criez,  messieurs  !  hurlez  !  vos  cris  n'atteindront  jamais  le  niveau 
de  mon  dedain  !  " 

Monsieur   de   Circourt   was   another   friend  of  Hawtrey's.     One 


54  Memories 

morning  at  breakfast — it  must  have  been  about  the  year  '50  or  '51 
— the  Irish  famine  was  being  discussed.  M.  de  Circourt,  who 
prided  himself  on  his  knowledge  of  England,  and  more  especially 
of  our  language,  startled  the  table  by  saying  :  "  But  why  did  you 
not  feed  zem  wiz  mice?  "  (maize).  The  host  without  a  smile 
answered :  "  Oh  !  but  we  did  send  them  quantities  of  Indian 
corn,"  and  so  cleverly  turning  the  difficulty,  saved  his  guest's  face. 
His  wit  was  very  ready — and  would  sometimes  manifest  itself 
in  very  unexpected  moments.  On  one  occasion,  a  boy  of  the 
name  of  Bosanquet  was  sent  up  to  the  Head  Master  for  execution. 
The  paraphernalia  of  doom  were  all  in  order  ;  the  block  was  drawn 
out  from  the  wall,  and  two  small  collegers  stood  beside  it — the 
holders-down.  The  sixth  form  Praepositor  handed  the  rod  to  the 
Doctor  with  the  "  bill  "  upon  which  were  written  the  names  of 
the  victims.  Hawtrey  read  out :  "  Bosanquet !  "  The  boy  cor- 
rected him  rather  pertly  :  "  Please,  sir,  my  name  is  Bosanquet  not 

Bosanquet. 

"  Sive  tu  mavis  Bosanquet  vocari 
Sive  Bosanquet,"* 

answered  Hawtrey,  pointing  majestically  to  the  block  with  his 
long  rod.  He  was  so  pleased  with  his  neat  paraphrase  of  Horace 
that  the  metrically  injured  boy  got  off  very  cheap. 

One  night  three  boys,  Gerry  Goodlake,  who  afterwards  won 
the  V.C.  at  the  battle  of  the  Alma,  Suttie  and  another  whose  name 
I  have  forgotten,  got  out  of  their  tutor's  (Elliot's)  house,  disguised 
as  navvies,  went  up  town  and  procured  a  liberal  supply  of  the 
materials  necessary  for  the  brewing  of  a  bowl  of  rum  punch,  with 
which  they  managed,  as  they  hoped  unseen,  to  get  back  into  their 
rooms.  Unfortunately  for  them  old  Bott,  the  good  old  Waterloo 
man  who  was  the  College  policeman,  had  marked  them  down, 
and  at  the  moment  when  the  brew  was  steaming  fragrance  in 
walked  the  tutor.  The  result  was,  of  course,  an  execution,  the 
anticipation  of  which  aroused  such  a  fever  in  the  school  that  many 
boys  committed  small  crimes  in  the  hope  of  having  a  fine  view  of 
the  tragedy  at  the  expense  of  the  traditional  four  cuts  of  the  birch. 

*  "  Sive  tu  Lucina  probas  vocari, 

Seu  Genitalis." — Horace,  "  Carmen  Seculare,"  15. 


Eton  55 

Hawtrey  was  bewildered  by  the  number  of  "  bills  "  that  kept 
coming  in  ;  but  he  knew  his  boys  and  he  smelt  a  rat,  so  he  decided 
to  hold  the  great  execution  d  huts  clos,  divided  the  remaining 
"  complaints  "  into  two  halves — kept  one  half  himself  to  be  dealt 
with  at  future  "  after  schools,"  and  sent  the  other  half  down  to 
Dickie  Okes*  to  be  attended  to  in  lower  school.  Great  was  the 
disappointment  of  the  bloodthirsty  little  villains  at  the  Doctor's 
cleverness. 

In  Sir  Henry  Maxwell  Lyte's  otherwise  admirable  "History  of 
Eton  College  "  there  is  one  great  blemish  in  the  very  niggardly 
praise,  or  perhaps  it  would  be  more  truthful  to  say  the  very  liberal 
dispraise,  which  is  attached  to  Hawtrey's  scholarship.  We  are 
continually  being  told  that  it  was  inaccurate.  In  one  very  unjust 
passage  it  is  contended  in  addition  "  that  he  was  not  thoroughly 
well-informed,  though  he  spent  thirty  thousand  pounds  on  books  ;  " 
that  "  he  could  not  estimate  correctly  the  intellectual  development 
of  younger  men,  though  he  corresponded  with  the  leaders  of  England 
and  France  ;  "  that  "  he  was  not  qualified  to  train  schoolboys,  like 
Vaughan  and  Kennedy,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

Not  for  one  moment  would  I  detract  from  the  teaching  of  those 
great  masters.  All  that  I  care  to  insist  upon  is  the  immense  value 
of  Hawtrey's  teaching,  equally'as  good  as  theirs,  though  different ;  the 
boys  felt  that  his  object  was  not  so  much  to  make  the  divine  poetry 
of  the  Greeks  nothing  but  a  peg  upon  which  to  hang  a  discussion 
on  grammatical  problems,  but  in  addition  to  reveal  the  soul  which 
animated  the  work,  and  so  to  arouse  a  love  of  philology,  lighting 
in  the  young  minds  of  his  scholars  the  same  spark  of  enthusiasm 
which  had  been  the  beacon  illuminating  and  making  beautiful 
his  own  life.  Surely  if  this  be  dilettantism,  it  is  also  that  which 
draws  the  highest  value  out  of  what  is  called  a  classical  education. 
Profoundly  versed  in  the  European  classics,  he  was  able  to  illustrate 
his  lectures  by  quotations  from  French,  German,  and  Italian 
sources,  and  so  by  his  observations  in  comparative  criticism  he 
would  galvanize  into  new  life  the  beauties  of  the  ancient  writers, 
redeeming  them  from  that  deterrent  dullness  which  attaches  to 
what  are  looked  upon  as  lessons.  The  result  of  his  teaching  can 

*  The  lower  master ;  afterwards  Provost  of  King's  College,  Cambridge. 


56  Memories 

be  seen  by  the  great  position  attained  by  his  pupils  in  their  after 
life  in  the  great  world. 

As  an  older  boy,  and  later  as  a  young  man,  I  often  had  the 
chance  of  listening  to  his  talk  upon  classical  subjects,  which  was 
in  the  highest  degree  interesting  and  stimulating.  I  only  wish 
that  Sir  Henry  Maxwell  Lyte  had  had  the  same  opportunity ;  I 
think  that  his  estimate  of  Dr.  Hawtrey  would  have  been  very 
different.  There  was  something  bright  and  sunny  and  joyous 
in  his  scholarship,  which  was  absolutely  free  from  all  pedantry, 
and  was  totally  different  from  that  of  the  two  men  who  preceded 
and  followed  him  in  his  office. 

Dr.  Keate  was  a  stern,  severe  disciplinarian  ;  indeed,  in  the 
remembrance  of  his  severity  people  are  apt  to  forget  that  he  was 
famous  for  sound  and  accurate  scholarship.  Dr.  Goodford,  too, 
was  a  great  scholar,  but  his  learning  was  rather  of  a  dull,  dry-as-dust 
type.  In  his  classes  the  Greek  particles  reigned  supreme — imagina- 
tion, the  winged  child  of  the  muses,  flew  away  into  space,  scared 
by  the  digamma.  It  used  to  be  said  that  his  children,  aged  five 
and  six,  were  translating  Plato,  while  the  poodle  dog  looked  out 
the  words  in  Liddell  and  Scott's  dictionary — then,  by  the  bye,  a 
new  apparition. 

Hawtrey,  on  the  contrary,  was  full  of  fun — witness  some  of 
his  translations  in  the  "  Arundines  Cami."  He  could  turn  an 
epigram  in  French,  Italian  or  German  such  as  would  deceive  the 
very  elect  into  the  belief  that  it  was  the  work  of  a  native;  some 
of  his  Italian  poems,  privately  printed,  won  special  praise  from 
those  best  capable  of  judging.  His  appreciation  of  wit  was  alive 
to  the  last.  When  he  was  already  a  very  old  man,  and  I  a  clerk 
in  the  Foreign  Office,  I  remember  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he 
welcomed  the  arrival  of  Mrs.  Poyser  to  enrich  the  gaiety  of  the 
world.  It  was  this  spirit  of  fun  which  enabled  him  to  enter  into 
the  wildest  pranks  of  his  boys — so  long  as  they  were  harmless. 

Windsor  Fair,  held  in  Bachelor's  Acre,  was  a  forbidden  play- 
ground for  the  younger  boys.  The  sixth  form,  on  the  other  hand, 
went  there  to  act  as  police.  Once  I  had  been  sent  for  to  dine 
with  the  Head  Master,  with  whom  my  father  was  staying  during 
the  Fair  time.  He  came  in  rather  late,  dressed  in  cap  and  gown 


Eton  57 

laughing  merrily,  and  carrying  half  a  dozen  penny  dolls, 
monkey-sticks,  and  toys  which  had  been  laid  upon  his  desk. 
"  What  in  the  name  of  wonder  have  you  got  there  ?  "  asked  my 
father.  "  I  always  get  my  fairings,"  he  said.  He  made  the  life 
of  a  pedagogue  a  life  of  sympathy  and  good  comradeship,  and 
so  a  life  of  joy  for  all  who  came  under  his  kindly  rule.  What 
wonder  that  he  was  adored  ? 

After  all,  the  worth  of  the  work  for  good  or  for  evil  which  has 
been  done  by  an  administrator  must  be  judged  by  the  fruit  which 
it  has  borne.  How  did  Hawtrey  find  Eton  ?  how  did  he  leave 
it  ?  Happily  we  are  able  to  call  upon  a  great  and  unimpeachable 
witness.  It  was  Hawtrey  who  first  sent  up  for  good  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. "  It  was,"  he  writes,  "  an  event  in  my  life.  He  and  it 
together  then  for  the  first  time  inspired  me  with  a  desire  to  learn 
and  to  do."  Again — "  The  popular  supposition  is  "  (Mr.  Glad- 
stone, January  3,  1890),  "  that  Eton  from  1830  onwards  was  swept 
along  by  a  tide  of  renovation  due  to  the  fame  and  contagiou 
example  of  Dr.  Arnold.  But  this,  in  my  opinion,  is  an  error 
Eton  was  in  a  singularly  small  degree  open  to  influence  from  other 
public  schools.  There  were  three  persons  to  whom  Eton  was 
more  indebted  than  any  others  for  the  new  life  poured  into  her 
arteries  :  Dr.  Hawtrey,  the  contemporary  Duke  of  Newcastle, 
and  Bishop  Selwyn."* 

In  1846,  the  year  of  which  I  am  writing,  mathemathics  were 
no  part  of  the  school  curriculum,  which  remained  untouched  as  it 
had  been  from  all  time.  Hawtrey  in  1851  made  mathematics 
compulsory,  to  the  intense  disgust  of  all  us,  little  conservatives  to 
the  core,  who  considered  that  the  knowledge  that  two  and  two 
make  four  might  be  an  accomplishment,  but  formed  no  part  of 
the  education  of  a  gentleman.  He  substituted  competition  for 
nomination  to  scholarships  on  the  foundation.  He  fostered  the 
study  of  modern  languages,  promoted  examinations,  and  did  all 
that  was  in  his  power  to  bring  Eton  up  to  the  standard  required 
by  modern  advancement  and  culture. 

His  greatest  feat,  achieved  in  the  face  of  cruel  unpopularity,  was 
the  abolition  of  Montem.     He  was  wise  enough  to  see  that  a  custom. 
*  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography.1' 


58  Memories 

kindly  and  picturesque  in  old  days,  must,  with  the  arrival  of  the 
railway,  which  did  away  with  all  the  privacy  of  Eton,  degenerate 
into  an  ugly  saturnalia.  So  long  as  the  festival  was  confined  to 
the  friends  and  relations  of  the  boys,  it  was  all  very  well  to  collect 
from  parents,  old  boys  and  their  friends  "  Salt,"  a  sum  destined 
to  help  the  senior  colleger  in  his  first  year  at  Cambridge.  But 
now,  with  the  influx  of  a  mob  from  London,  it  must  become  a 
degradation.  Many  influences  were  against  him,  not  in  Eton 
alone,  but  in  the  greater  world  outside  ;  wisely  he  stuck  to  his 
guns,  and  Montem  ceased  to  exist.  Generous  as  always,  when 
the  triennial  feast  came  round  in  1847,  he  gave,  out  of  his  own 
purse,  to  the  parents  of  the  boy  who  would  have  profited  by  the 
"  Salt  "  a  present  of  three  hundred  pounds.  How  strong  the 
feeling  was  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  on  that  day  some  of  the 
masters  were  stoned  on  their  way  to  school.  It  is  only  fair  to 
say  that  Provost  Hodgson,  who  succeeded  Goodall,  backed  up  the 
Head  Master  in  this  crisis. 

I  may  record  another  instance  of  his  large-hearted  love  of 
giving.  An  old  friend  and  colleague  of  his  had  got  himself  into 
financial  difficulties.  Hawtrey  could  not  see  the  home  of  a 
brilliant  man  broken  up  and  himself  brought  to  a  pecuniary 
misery.  He  paid  up  all  debts  and  set  his  friend  free.  He  was 
rewarded  by  the  blackest  and  most  treacherous  ingratitude.  He 
never  uttered  a  reproach,  but  I  have  reason  to  know  that  he  was 
cut  to  the  quick.  He  suffered  in  silence. 

Such  was  the  dear  old  man  who  bent  down  to  welcome  me, 
the  little  boy  whom  he  had  known  in  petticoats,  on  my  first  entry 
into  his  kingdom.  Smiling  and  laughing,  brimming  over  with 
kindness,  he  regaled  me  with  all  sorts  of  delightful  old-time  tales 
of  his  own  school  days,  little  experiences  all  chosen  because  in 
them  there  was  just  a  taste  of  schoolboy  wisdom  :  some  useful 
hint  conveyed  with  fun  and  merriment ;  advice  not  flung  like  a 
cricket  ball  at  the  youngster's  head,  but  just  brought  out  in  such 
a  way  as  to  be  reassuring  and  encouraging.  That  luncheon  was  a 
memorable  episode  in  a  memorable  day,  and  it  was  the  first  link  in 
a  long  chain  of  kindnesses  which  lasted  during  the  eight  years  that 
I  was  at  Eton,  and  did  not  abate  until  the  good  man's  death  in  1862. 


Eton  59 

The  consulate  of  Dr.  Hawtrey  was  a  time  of  transition  at  Eton 
as  elsewhere.  The  Eton  to  which  I  was  sent  in  1846  differed  in 
little  from  that  which  my  father  had  known  some  thirty  years 
earlier.  With  the  exception  of  the  new  College  buildings,  only 
just  finished,  in  Weston's  Yard,  the  outer  aspect  of  the  place  had 
undergone  no  change.  There  were  the  same  old  tumbledown, 
crazy  tenements  with  weather-stained  walls  and  patched  roofs, 
occupied  by  tutors  and  dames.  All  the  sanitary  arrangements — 
save  the  word ! — were  primitively  disgusting.  Baths  were  un- 
known. During  the  summer  months,  by  the  grace  of  Father 
Thames,  there  was  bathing  in  Cuckoo  Weir,  at  Upper  Hope,  and 
at  Athens,  but  from  September  till  about  May  foot-tubs  of  hot 
water  carried  to  the  various  rooms  on  a  Saturday  night  represented 
all  the  cleanliness  that  was  deemed  necessary. 

The  Reform  Act  and  new  forces,  born  of  railways  and  machinery, 
and  what  were  by  many  derided  as  new-fangled  fads  of  hygiene 
were  compelling  and  irresistible.  During  the  last  two  years  of 
my  schoolboyhood  the  cold  tub  had  become  an  institution  of  every 
morning.  Many  other  improvements  were  in  progress  and  have 
long  since  been  carried  out. 

The  head  master's  house,  if  an  anachronism,  was  eminently 
fitted  to  its  venerable  and  book-loving  tenant.  It  still  stands, 
a  picturesque  building  of  which  the  red  bricks  and  tiles  have  grown 
hoary  with  age,  long,  low  and  rambling,  flush  with  the  Slough  Road 
on  one  side,  separated  on  the  other  from  Weston's  Yard  by  a  narrow 
strip  of  garden.  It  was  so  shallow  that,  like  Hampton  Court,  Berke- 
ley Castle,  and  many  old-fashioned  buildings,  it  consisted  only  of  a 
succession  of  rooms  leading  into  one  another.  On  the  first  floor  a 
very  meagre  passage  had  been  negotiated,  so  as  to  give  some  privacy 
to  bedrooms,  but  on  the  ground  floor  there  was  nothing  but  a  chain 
of  rooms.  From  floor  to  ceiling  every  room  was  lined  with  book- 
cases criss-crossed  with  thick  brass  wires,  in  which  the  treasures 
which  were  the  accumulation  of  a  lifetime  were  amassed.  Even 
the  bedrooms  were  fitted  in  the  same  way.  It  was  one  huge  library. 

I  do  not  remember  any  works  of  art  or  ornaments  with  the  excep- 
tion of  one  of  Wedgwood's  copies  of  the  Portland  Vase.  When 
Provost  Hodgson  died  on  the  2Qth  of  December,  1852,  Dr.  Hawtrey 


60  Memories 

succeeded  him.  The  drop  in  income  was  considerable,  and  he  had 
been  too  large  a  giver  to  have  saved  anything.  A  great  portion  of 
the  library  had  to  be  sold,  and  it  went  for  what  even  at  that  time 
was  a  song.  What  would  it  have  been  worth  now  ?  Before  chang- 
ing over  into  the  Provost's  lodge,  Dr.  Hawtrey  sent  for  me  and  gave 
me,  as  a  keepsake  in  memory  of  many  happy  days  spent  with  him 
among  his  books,  a  beautiful  little  Elzevir  Livy.  To  my  father,  his 
old  pupil,  he  gave  a  grand  copy  of  Tasso. 

The  house  is  very  old,  having  been  occupied  by  Sir  Henry  Savile, 
the  handsome  lay  Provost  whose  appointment  by  Queen  Elizabeth 
in  May,  1596,  "  any  statute,  act  or  canon  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing," raised  a  small  storm.  Here  he  set  up  his  printing-press, 
and  in  1613  published  his  great  edition  of  S.  Chrysostom  in  eight 
folio  volumes.  He  also  printed  Xenophon's  "  Cyropaedia "  and 
Thomas  Bradwardine's  "  De  Causa  Dei  contra  Pelagium."  With  the 
Provostship  of  Eton  he  combined  the  office  of  Warden  of  Merton 
College  at  Oxford. 

Probably  no  private  house  can  claim  such  a  connection  with 
books  and  letters.  For  many  years  now  it  has  been  occupied  by 
the  Precentor,  Dr.  Law — and  it  seems  likely  to  remain  the  official 
home  of  music. 

Hawtrey's  reforms  would  probably  have  been  carried  out  much 
sooner — perhaps  even  Keate  might  have  fathered  some  of  them 
— but  Provost  Goodall,  a  grand  and  courtly  gentleman  of  the  old 
school,  had  the  faults  of  his  qualities ;  he  was  the  deadly  enemy  of 
change  ;  he  was  one  of  those  men  to  whom  progress  means  disaster, 
and  having  the  might  to  spoke  the  wheels  of  the  coach,  he  used  it 
with  such  effect  that  Hawtrey  was  practically  powerless.  But  in 
1840  Provost  Goodall  died,  and  after  some  trouble  between  the 
Court  and  the  Fellows,  the  candidate  favoured  by  Queen  Victoria 
was  appointed,  and  Archdeacon  Hodgson,  the  intimate  friend  of 
Lord  Byron,  became  Provost. 

Lyte's  history  shows  how  keenly  the  new  Provost  set  to  work 
to  improve  the  position  of  the  collegers,  and  how  ably  he  was 
seconded  by  Hawtrey.  The  new  buildings  in  Weston's  Yard  were 
the  result,  and  they,  with  the  two  red-brick  houses  by  Keate  s  Lane 
opposite  upper  school,  were  the  only  substantial  additions  made  to 


Eton  61 

the  College  since  the  early  days  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The 
two  doughty  champions  worked  well  together — Hodgson  for  the 
much-wronged  collegers ;  Hawtrey  determined  that  Eton  should  no 
longer  be  a  mere  school  of  ornamental  classical  culture  for  the  small 
minority  who  could  or  would  take  advantage  of  it,  but  should  march 
with  the  times,  and  give  a  boy  such  an  education  as  would  fit  him 
to  play  a  practical  part  in  a  world  which  was  beginning  to  be  very 
much  on  the  move. 

It  is  almost  incredible  in  these  days  that,  as  I  have  said  above, 
until  the  year  1851  mathematics  were  no  part  of  the  school  work. 
French,  German  and  Italian  were,  needless  to  say,  in  the  same  boat. 
That  Frenchmen  should  exist  and  have  a  language  of  their  own  was, 
however  deplorable,  an  admitted  fact,  but  only  on  condition  that 
one  Englishman  should  be  equal  to  four  Frenchmen,  or,  according 
to  Boswell  in  his  adulation  of  Johnson,  forty.  Such  were  the  archaic 
doctrines  in  which  we  were  brought  up,  until  wise  Dr.  Hawtrey  swept 
all  the  old  cobwebs  away. 

When  at  last  mathematics  were  introduced,  Mr.  Stephen  Hawtrey, 
a  cousin  of  the  Doctor's,  who  had  been  a  high  wrangler  at  Cambridge, 
was  appointed  master.  In  order  to  parcel  out  the  boys  into  divi- 
sions under  his  several  assistants  he  had  to  hold  an  examination. 
Naturally  the  object  of  every  one  of  us  was  to  make  as  bad  a  show 
as  possible  in  order  to  be  put  into  an  easy  place.  When  my  form 
came  up  for  viva  voce,  question  after  question  did  the  unhappy  man 
put.  No  answer.  At  last  in  despair  he  cried  :  "  Is  there  no  boy 
here  who  can  tell  me  what  twice  two  makes  ?  "  After  a  pause, 
'  Yes,  sir  !  Please,  sir,  I  can  !  "  said  a  very  cunning  little  chap 

called  K .  "  Well,  what  is  it  ?  "  "  Five,  sir,  please,  sir  !  " 

There  were  many  applauding  grins,  but  for  that  day  Stephanos,  as 
he  was  called,  gave  up  our  form  in  despair.  What  troublous  days 
the  poor  assistant  mathematical  masters  suffered  !  How  they  were 
teased  and  worried  !  Very  foolishly,  the  authorities  would  not  give 
them  the  same  status  that  the  classical  masters  enjoyed  ;  they  were 
not  allowed  to  wear  cap  and  gown,  and  might  not  complain  to  the 
Head  Master  direct.  Of  course  this  encouraged  the  boys  to  be  as 
rebellious  and  wicked  as  they  pleased;  and  being  boys,  they  took 
royal  advantage  of  it. 


62  Memories 

Talking  of  extras,  I  do  not  think  that  many  boys  in  my  time 
learned  French  ;  still  fewer  German.  Old  Mr.  Tarver,  of  dictionary 
fame,  the  French  master,  was  a  very  charming  person,  liked  by  all 
of  us  who  knew  him.  His  story  was  curious.  He  was  an  English- 
man born  at  Dieppe  in  1790.  His  parents  were  imprisoned  in 
France  in  1793,  while  he  was  staying  at  the  house  of  a  friend,  M. 
FeVal,  who  was  chief  engineer  in  the  Fonts  et  Chauss6es  of  the 
Seine  Inferieure.  When  his  parents  escaped  to  England  he  was 
left  behind,  and  it  was  not  until  1814,  after  holding  various  appoint- 
ments, amongst  others  that  of  Secretary  to  the  Admiral  of  the 
French  fleet  at  Toulon  and  in  other  places,  that  he  was  able  to  seek 
them  out.  His  father  was  dead,  but  his  mother  was  still  alive. 

After  holding  different  educational  posts,  amongst  others  that  of 
tutor  to  the  Duke  of  Cambridge,  he  became  French  master,  and  held 
the  place  for  twenty-five  years.  He  died  in  1851,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  his  sons,  Henry  and  Frank.  He  had  a  pupil-room  in  the 
Christopher  Inn  Yard,  and  I  used  often  to  go  and  pay  him  a  little 
visit,  quite  apart  from  lessons,  and  listen  to  the  stories  of  his  old 
adventures.  One  of  his  sons,  Charles,  was  classical  tutor  to  King 
Edward  when  Prince  of  Wales. 

To  Herr  Schonerstedt  and  his  beloved  flute  I  have  already 
alluded.  He  was  a  tall,  handsome,  very  courtly  gentleman.  If  a 
boy  met  him  in  the  street  he  would  treat  him  as  ceremoniously  as 
if  he  were  a  Russian  Grand  Duke,  never  forgetting,  even  if  he  were 
meditating  revenge  for  some  crime,  to  make  a  sweeping  bow  and 
take  leave  with  a  grandiloquent  "gehorsamer  Diener."  With 
Signer  Sinibaldi  I  had  little  more  than  a  forefinger-to-hat 
acquaintance. 

Such  were  the  materials  out  of  which  the  new  Eton  was  evolved. 
All  the  principal  changes  took  place  in  my  time.  I  was  born  under 
the  old  dispensation  and  I  lived  through  the  transition  stage  into 
the  new.  Revolutions,  even  in  a  school  system,  are  not  brought  to 
maturity  in  a  day,  and  those  who  read  Sir  Henry  Maxwell  Lyte  will 
see  that  time  was  needed  to  make  the  new  machinery  work  smoothly. 

Provost  Hodgson,  as  I  recollect  him,  was  a  short,  fat,  sturdy 
little  man,  almost  as  broad  as  he  was  long,  waddling  not  with- 
out a  certain  web-footed  dignity  out  of  the  Provost's  Lodge 


Eton  63 

into  Weston's  Yard,  but  how  difficult  it  was  to  think  of  him  as 
the  cherished  friend  of  the  romantic,  devil-may-care  poet,  rebel 
against  all  law  and  convention.  Later  in  life  I  got  to  know 
Lord  Broughton.  Here  again  was  a  contrast  with  Byron — the 
reverend,  calm,  wise  and  judicious  statesman,  and  the  wild, 
defiant  child  of  genius.  Those  who  cry  out  so  loudly  against 
the  unhappy  poet  might  pause  and  ask  themselves  whether,  since 
he  could  inspire  undying  affection  in  two  such  men,  he  himself 
could  be  all  bad. 

As  I  have  said,  we  were  in  a  period  of  transition.  There  were 
here  and  there  a  few  old  gentlemen  who,  clinging  desperately  to 
ancient  traditions,  refused  to  exchange  their  knee-breeches  with 
bunches  of  ribbons  at  the  knee  for  the  vulgar  but  comfortable 
trousers.  Knee-breeches  were  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of 
obstruction.  Among  the  Fellows  of  Eton  two  of  these  faithful 
veterans  still  lived  and  hindered — Mr.  Bethell  and  Mr.  Plumptre. 
Mr.  Bethell  was  a  fine  old  dignitary  of  the  Church,  handsome  and 
well-nourished,  with  a  glowing  face  and  noble  paunch,  suggestive 
of  a  good  cook,  an  excellent  digestion,  and  a  well-stored  cellar.  He 
was  the  hero  of  the  crusty  old  story  of  the  days  when  he  was  a 
master :  "  ' ^Erati  postes  ' — ' brazen  gates' — very  good  translation ; 
probably  so  called  because  they  were  made  of  Brass."  He  had  been  a 
friend  of  some  of  my  people,  so  I  was  sometimes  invited  to  breakfast 
with  him.  The  rolls  were  memorable.  Mr.  Plumptre  was  famous 
for  sermons  of  appalling  length,  preached  upon  texts  that  were 
absolutely  grotesque. 

Lyte  quotes  several  of  these,  but  this  I  think  is  better  than  any 
that  he  gives.  Being  asked  once  to  preach  a  sermon  to  the  Blue- 
coat  boys,  he  took  for  his  text :  "  Moreover  his  mother  made  him  a 
little  coat  and  brought  it  to  him  from  year  to  year."  As  the  poor 
old  gentleman  had  not  a  tooth  left  in  his  head,  his  sermons, 
bellowed  out  at  the  top  of  a  powerful  but  very  indistinct  voice, 
were  exquisitely  comic. 

Plumptre's  defence  of  Montem  is  historic  ;  he  believed  it  to  have 
been  substituted  for  a  triennial  procession  in  honour  of  the  Virgin 
Mary,  and  that  therefore  it  ought  to  be  preserved  as  a  sort  of  protest 


64  Memories 

against  Popery.*  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  in  this  case  and  some 
others  Mr.  Bethell  sided  with  the  Provost  and  Head  Master.  The 
Fellows,  however  powerful  Hodgson  and  Hawtrey  might  be,  had 
still  a  toothless  voice  in  the  government  of  the  College.  There  was 
a  long  and  tough  fight  over  every  innovation,  but  in  the  end  common 
sense  prevailed  over  the  knee-breeches.  It  was  not  long  before  the 
last  of  these  disappeared  in  the  waters  of  Lethe. 

After  all,  they  could  claim  a  goodly  record  for  the  old  dispensation. 
Even  in  their  own  narrow  scholastic  circle  they  could  point  to  great 
teachers  like  Keatef  and  Hawtrey ;  among  the  assistant  masters 
were  Edward  Coleridge,  a  famous  tutor,  son-in-law  of  Keate,  who 
certainly  came  up  to  the  Greek  definition  of  a  gentleman  :  "  hand- 
some and  good ;  "  Cookesley,  a  crank,  but  a  brilliant  scholar, 
delighting  in  Pindar  and  Greek  metrical  problems ;  Carter,  clever, 
but  perhaps  a  little  too  eager  to  exact  heavy  payment  for  the 
pleasures  of  idleness ;  my  own  excellent  tutor,  best  and  kindest  of 
men,  Francis  Edward  Durnf ord ;  Edward  Balston,  afterwards  Head 
Master,  another  KaXoc  K'  ayaOog  ;  William  Johnson,  who  afterwards 
changed  his  name  to  Cory,  a  sound  scholar,  and  no  mean  poet. 
These  were  all  men  of  a  very  high  standard,  the  children  of 
the  old  Eton  herself,  children  of  whom  the  kind  mother  might  well 
be  proud. 

But  the  old  school  had  to  take  note  of  a  new  sharpness  hi  the 
struggle  for  life.  Not  the  schoolmaster  only,  but  the  examiner,  was 
abroad,  and  the  time  had  come  when  every  position,  no  matter 
how  humble,  must  be  won  by  hard  fighting.  So  the  last  three  years 

*  See  Maxwell  Lyte's  "  History  of  Eton  College,"  p.  526,  Ed.  1899. 

f  There  can  be  very  few  people  now  living  who  have  seen  and  talked 
with  the  famous  Dr.  Keate,  who  was  nailed  in  his  desk  during  the  great 
rebellion  and  flogged  eighty  boys  in  one  day.  My  father,  on  one  of  his  visits 
to  Eton,  took  me  up  to  see  him  in  the  cloisters  at  Windsor,  where  he  was 
canon.  In  appearance  he  was  exactly  like  the  many  caricatures  that  one 
used  to  see  of  him,  but  the  truculent  hero  of  the  birch  and  block,  so  faithfully 
painted  by  Kinglake  in  "  Eothen,"  had  grown  into  a  gentle,  mild,  little  old 
man,  of  whom  it  was  difficult  to  believe  that  he  had  ever  flogged  a  boy  or 
uttered  a  harsh  word.  He  had  abandoned  "  the  fancy  dress,  partly  re- 
sembling the  costume  of  Napoleon  and  partly  that  of  a  widow  woman  " 
("  Eothen,"  p.  276,  Ed.  1896),  and  was  now  garbed  as  a  commonplace  Early 
Victorian  parson. 


0  § 

1  k) 


UJ       i 


Eton  65 

of  the  eight  which  I  spent  at  Eton  were  lived  in  altered  circum- 
stances. Many  changes,  and  doubtless  great  improvements,  have 
been  effected  since  then,  but  the  first  great  upheaval  took  place  in 
1851  and  was  due  to  the  genius  and  foresight  of  Dr.  Hawtrey.  Far 
too  much  credit  for  all  this  has  been  given  to  Dr.  Goodford.  It 
is  true  that  many  alterations  took  place  during  his  tenure  of  office, 
but  they  had  almost  all  been  proposed  by  Dr.  Hawtrey  and  were 
only  delayed  by  the  obstruction  of  some  of  the  old  men,  with  Provost 
Goodail  at  their  head.  When  Hawtrey  became  Provost,  Goodford's 
path  was  smoothed  by  the  very  man  who  had  laid  its  foundation. 
I,  who  though  a  boy  or  a  very  young  man  was  much  behind  the 
scenes,  know  to  whom  the  palm  was  due. 

I  was  still  but  a  small  creature,  and  not  very  strong,  when  I  went 
to  Evans's,  so  I  was  put  into  the  private  part  of  the  house,  and 
Miss  Jennie  Evans,  then  a  tall  young  lady  of  about  twenty,  took  me 
under  her  wing.  About  fifty  years  afterwards,  when  she  had 
succeeded  to  her  good  old  father's  damery,  and  I  took  my  boy  to 
be  in  her  house,  she  said  to  him,  pointing  to  the  staircase  :  "  Many 
and  many  a  time  I  have  carried  your  father  pick-a-back  up  those 
stairs."  When  she  died  in  January,  1906,  the  last  of  the  dames, 
her  loss  meant  the  close  of  a  long  chapter  in  the  history  of 
Eton.  She  was  a  beloved  lady. 

By  degrees  I  sprouted  and  grew,  and  so  I  was  moved  into  the  main 
body  of  the  house,  where  I  had  a  snug  little  room  with  young  Charles 
Dickens  for  my  next-door  neighbour.  We  soon  became  allies,  and 
with  half  a  dozen  other  boys  started  a  little  newspaper  club  which 
developed  into  a  big  success.  In  the  "  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography "  his  name  is  given  as  "  Charles "  only.  He  was 
christened,  as  he  told  me,  Charles  Boz  Dickens.  When  he  was 
taken  to  the  font  on  his  baptism,  and  the  parson  told  the  godfather 
to  "  name  this  child,"  the  sponsor  said  "  Charles,"  but  the  old  grand- 
father, the  prototype  of  Mr.  Micawber,  as  proud  as  Punch  of  his 
already  famous  son,  cried  out  "  Boz,"  and  "  Charles  Boz  "  he  became 
accordingly.  My  friendship  with  him  led  to  my  first  acquaintance 
with  his  great  father,  who  came  down  to  Eton  one  fine  summer's 
day,  with  Mark  Lemon  and,  I  think,  Shirley  Brooks,  and  took  several 
of  us  up  the  river  to  Maidenhead. 

VOL   i  5 


66  Memories 

What  a  day  that  was  !  The  great  man  was  full  of  life,  bubbling 
over  with  fun,  the  youngest  boy  of  the  party.  I  often  met  him  in 
after  life,  but  then,  wonderful  as  he  was  upon  occasions,  his  face  when 
at  rest  already  showed  signs  of  fatigue ;  the  strenuous  work  had  told 
upon  him  ;  he  looked  careworn  and  older  than  his  years.  I  like  to 
think  of  him  as  he  was  on  that  day  at  Maidenhead,  brilliant,  young 
and  gay,  the  spirit  of  joy  incarnate.  It  was  at  the  time  when  he 
was  writing  "  Bleak  House."  I  never  saw  his  son  after  our  Eton 
days.  He  was  a  clever  boy,  but  he  did  not  achieve  as  much  in  life 
as  he  might  have  done ;  perhaps  he  never  quite  found  his  legs. 
In  letters,  no  doubt,  he  felt  crushed  by  his  own  great  name  ;  he 
went  into  business,  for  which  it  seems  he  had  no  aptitude,  and  he 
died  when  still  in  the  prime  of  life. 

Eton  has  been  the  Alma  Mater  of  many  of  the  eminent  men 
who  have  played  a  foremost  part  in  the  history  of  England.  In 
my  day  there  were  many  brilliant  boys,  some  of  whom  distinguished 
themselves  in  after  life.  Of  my  own  immediate  contemporaries 
none  could  be  held  to  come  up  to  Sir  Michael  Hicks  Beach,  now 
Lord  St.  Aldwyn.  There  was  no  W.  E.  Gladstone  ;  Lord  Salisbury, 
then  Lord  Robert  Cecil,  and  Lord  Roberts  had  just  left ;  Arthur 
Balfour,  Lord  Rosebery  and  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  were  not 
yet.  Our  fellows  did  well  enough,  though  we  did  not  produce  a 
Phoenix.  Alfred  Thesiger  died  as  a  Lord  Justice  of  Appeal  at  an 
age  when  many  men  are  wondering  whether  they  will  ever  get  a 
brief. 

Montague  Williams  was  famous  as  a  police  magistrate  ;  in  the 
Civil  Service  we  could  count  as  permanent  heads  of  departments, 
Lord  Welby  at  the  Treasury,  Lord  Tenterden,  Lord  Currie  and 
Lord  Sanderson  at  the  Foreign  Office,  Sir  Robert  Herbert  at  the 
Colonial  Office,  Sir  Charles  Rivers  Wilson  at  the  National  Debt 
Office,  Sir  Algernon  West  at  the  Inland  Revenue,  Sir  Stevenson 
Blackwood  at  the  Post  Office,  followed  by  Sir  Spencer  Walpole, 
who  also  achieved  fame  as  an  historian,  Sir  Charles  Fremantle 
at  the  Mint,  myself  at  the  Office  of  Works. 

I  have  heard  it  objected  that  Eton's  successes  are  due  to  the 
fact  that  its  boys  belong  to  "  the  governing  classes."  They  forget 
that  for  the  last  fifty  years  and  more  the  entry  into  the  Civil 


Eton  67 

Service  has  been  by  public  examination.  I  myself  entered  the 
Foreign  Office  by  competition  just  fifty-seven  years  ago.  Even  hi 
old  days,  it  was  only  the  first  appointments  that  were  given  by 
patronage.  The  higher  posts,  what  one  might  call  the  Staff 
appointments,  were  given  by  selection  for  merit.  Ministers  were 
far  too  dependent  upon  the  ability  and  industry  of  the  permanent 
heads  of  departments  to  hamper  themselves  with  incompetent 
men.  Judged  at  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  the  men  whom  I  have 
mentioned  will  not  be  found  wanting. 

In  politics  and  diplomacy  we  could  claim  our  fair  share  of 
Cabinet  Ministers,  Ambassadors  and  Envoys  Extraordinary.  Our 
great  president  of  Pop,  Edmond  Wodehouse,  and  his  inseparable 
friend  Reginald  Yorke  were  as  great  in  the  cricket  and  football 
fields  as  they  were  in  Library,  born  leaders  of  boys.  Even  when 
he  was  a  lad  Wodehouse's  speeches,  models  ol  the  purest  English 
delivered  with  a  gentle  musical  voice,  were  very  attractive  ;  he 
was  afterwards,  as  member  for  Bath,  a  prominent  Liberal 
Unionist — prominent  rather  in  spite  of  himself,  for  he  sought 
no  office ;  and  it  was  a  matter  of  universal  opinion  that  his  plat- 
form oratory  at  the  time  of  the  split  in  the  Liberal  party  was 
second  only  to  that  of  Mr.  Chamberlain.  A  breakdown  hi 
health  robbed  the  State  of  a  great  servant — Eton  of  the  fame 
of  an  illustrious  son.  Yorke,  after  a  brilliant  outset,  gave  up 
public  life  much  too  early  ;  he  lacked  ambition,  which,  had  he 
possessed  it,  must  have  driven  him  into  very  high  places.  He, 
alas  !  is  no  more.  When  he  died  I  lost  a  friend  of  more  than 
sixty  years.  But  when  I  first  went  to  Eton  the  idol  before  whom 
all  we  small  imps  prostrated  ourselves  was  the  great  Chitty,  after- 
wards Lord  Justice  of  Appeal.  He  was  indeed  an  Admirable 
Crichton.  Wicket-keeper  in  the  eleven  at  Eton,  he  twice  played 
at  Lords  in  the  University  eleven,  the  second  time  as  captain 
Then  he  took  to  the  river,  and  stroked  the  University  eight  for 
three  years  ;  took  a  first  class  and  the  Vinerian  Scholarship,  and 
was  for  many  years  umpire  to  the  boat-race  of  the  Blues.  Long 
after  he  had  left  we  spoke  of  him  with  bated  breath  as  fitted  to  be 
one  of  the  chosen  guests  at  the  banquets  of  high  Olympus.  Should 
we  not  hi  the  same  category,  as  another  Admirable  Crichton,  place 
VOL.  i  5* 


68  Memories 

Dr.  Warre,  scholar,  athlete,  Head  Master — Provost  ?  He  was  in 
the  same  division  as  myself. 

Of  all  the  boys  of  my  time  who  made  a  name  for  themselves 
in  the  world  by  far  the  most  remarkable  was  my  cousin  Algernon 
-Charles  Swinburne,  that  wayward  child  of  the  Muses.  I  am  glad 
to  know  that  his  life  is  being  written  by  a  brother  poet,  a  foremost 
man  of  letters,  who  knew  him  intimately  in  his  most  brilliant 
days,  a  man  who  is  possessed  of  all  those  qualities  which  Dr. 
Johnson  deemed  to  be  indispensable  in  a  good  biographer.  Mr. 
Gosse,  knowing  my  relationship  to  Swinburne,  asked  me  to  furnish 
him  with  some  particulars  as  to  the  poet's  schoolboy  life  ;  this  I 
did  in  a  letter  written  partly  hi  answer  to  some  foolish  misstate- 
ments  which  appeared  in  a  letter  from  another  schoolfellow  written 
to  the  Times. 

I  was  in  hopes  that  Mr.  Gosse,  who  printed  the  letter  in  a  short 
biographical  sketch  which  he  issued  privately  hi  1912,  would  have 
done  me  the  honour  of  including  my  notice  in  the  larger  book 
upon  which  he  is  engaged.  He,  however,  very  generously  insists 
that  I  must  take  back  my  humble  gift,  and  make  it  part  of  my 
sketch  of  Eton.  It  would  be  churlish  to  refuse  to  obey  the  behest 
of  so  good  a  friend,  and  so  I  append  from  my  letter  to  him  such 
extracts  as  seem  to  be  to  the  point.  But  how  proud  should 
I  have  been  had  they  appeared  for  the  first  time  under  his 
segis  ! 

Swinburne  entered  Eton  at  the  beginning  of  the  summer  half 
of  1849.  His  father  the  Admiral,  a  scion  of  the  grand  old  North- 
umbrian family,  and  my  aunt,  Lady  Jane,  brought  him,  and  at 
once  sent  for  me  to  put  him  under  my  care.  I  was  "  to  look  after 
him."  It  is  true  that  I  was  only  a  few  weeks  older  than  himself, 
and  so,  physically,  not  much  of  a  protector ;  but  I  had  been  three 
years  at  school,  to  which  I  was  sent  when  I  was  nine  years  old,  so 
I  knew  my  Eton  thoroughly,  and  was  well  versed  in|all  its  dear, 
delightful  ways — mysteries  bewildering  to  the  uninitiated.  I 
was  already  a  little  man  of  the  world,  at  any  rate  of  that  microcosm 
which  is  a  public  school,  and  so  I  was  able  "to  steer  my  small  cousin 
through  some  shoals. 

What  a  fragile  little  creature  he  seemed  as  he  stood  there  between 


Eton  69 

his  father  and  mother  with  his  wondering  eyes  fixed  upon  me  ! 
Under  his  arm  he  hugged  his  Bowdler's  Shakespeare,  a  very  precious 
treasure  bound  in  brown  leather  with,  for  a  marker,  a  narrow  slip 
of  ribbon — blue  I  think — with  a  button  of  that  most  heathenish 
marqueterie  called  Tunbridge  ware  dangling  from  the  end  of  it. 
He  was  strangely  tiny.  His  limbs  were  small  and  delicate,  and 
his  sloping  shoulders  looked  far  too  weak  to  carry  his  great  head, 
the  size  of  which  was  exaggerated  by  the  tousled  mass  of  red  hair 
standing  almost  at  right  angles  to  it.  Hero-worshippers  talk  of 
his  hair  as  having  been  a  "  golden  aureole."  At  that  time  there 
was  nothing  golden  about  it.  Red,  violent,  aggressive  red  it  was. 
unmistakable  red,  burnished  copper.  His  features  were  small  and 
beautiful,  chiselled  as  daintily  as  those  of  some  Greek  sculptor's 
masterpiece. 

His  skin  was  very  white — not  unhealthy,  but  a  transparent 
tinted  white  such  as  one  sees  in  the  petals  of  some  roses.  His 
face  was  the  very  replica  of  that  of  his  dear  mother,  and  she  was 
one  of  the  most  refined  and  lovely  of  women.  What  the  colour 
of  his  eyes  was  I  never  knew — grey,  green  or  brown,  they  reflected 
his  mood  and  must  have  been  of  the  same  colour  that  his  soul 
was  at  that  moment ;  they  could  be  soft  and  tender,  blaze  with 
rage,  or  sparkle  with  fire.  His  red  hair  must  have  come  from  the 
Admiral's  side,  for  I  never  heard  of  a  red-haired  Ashburnham. 
The  Admiral  himself,  whom  I  rarely  saw,  was,  so  well  as  my 
memory  serves  me,  already  grizzled,  but  his  hair  must  have  been 
originally  very  fair  or  even  red. 

Another  characteristic  which  Algernon  inherited  from  his 
mother  was  the  voice.  All  who  knew  him  must  remember  that 
exquisitely  soft  voice  with  a  rather  sing-song  intonation,  like  that 
of  the  Russians  when  they  put  the  music  of  their  own  Slav  voices 
into  the  French  language.  All  his  mother's  brothers  and  sisters 
had  it.  He  alone,  so  far  as  I  know,  among  my  cousins  reproduced 
it.  Listening  to  him  sometimes  I  could  almost  fancy  that  I  could 
hear  my  aunt  herself  speaking,  so  startling  was  the  likeness.  His 
language,  even  at  that  age,  was  beautiful,  fanciful,  and  richly 
varied.  Altogether  my  recollection  of  him  in  those  school- 
days is  that  of  a  fascinating,  most  lovable  little  fellow.  It  is 


yo  Memories 

but  a  child's  impression  of  another  child,  but  I  believe  it  to 
be  just. 

That  morning,  after  the  manner  of  little  dogs  and  little  boys,  we 
stood  and  looked  at  one  another  shyly,  suspiciously  ;  but  by  the 
time  his  parents  left  we  had  become  fast  friends  and  so  we  remained. 
We  had  something  in  common  to  make  us  sib  besides  the  sister- 
hood of  his  mother  and  mine.  On  our  fathers'  side  we  both  came 
from  old  Northumbrian  stocks,  and  there  is  something  in  the 
Borderland  which  makes  for  a  feeling  of  kinship,  even  if  in  ancient 
times  there  should  have  been  blood  feuds.  Under  the  spell  of  the 
Border  feeling  Swinburne  was  bewitched  ;  it  never  lost  its  power 
over  him.  The  wind  blowing  over  those  wild  moors,  which  are  still 
the  home  of  legends  and  ballads  of  raids  and  fights  and  deeds  of 
derring-do,  had  pierced  his  soul.  He  was  a  true  son  of  Northumbria, 
and  was  eager  to  become  a  soldier  and  bear  arms  ;  little  creature 
as  he  was,  had  he  lived  in  the  old  days,  he  would  have  carried  a 
stout  heart  into  any  fray  where  there  might  be  the  clash  of  steel 
against  morion  and  breastplate,  leading  a  troop  of  his  own  people 
like  Barry  of  the  Comb,  or  Corbit  Jock,  in  an  expedition  over  the 
Border  against  Eliots  and  Kers,  and  Scots  and  Maxwells.  He  was 
born  three  centuries  too  late. 

Of  course,  being  in  different  houses,  we  could  not  be  so  con- 
stantly together  as  if  we  had  both  been  in  the  same  house.  I 
was  at  Evans's  and  Durnford  was  my  tutor.  He  was  at  Joynes's 
and  of  course  Joynes  was  his  tutor.  Still  we  often  met,  and 
pretty  frequently  breakfasted  together,  he  with  me,  or  I  with  him. 
Chocolate  in  his  room,  tea  in  mine.  The  guest  brought  his  own 
"  order  "  of  rolls  and  butter,  and  the  feast  was  made  rich  by  the 
addition  of  sixpennyworth  of  scraped  beef  or  ham  from  Joe  Groves's, 
a  small  sock-shop  which  was  almost  immediately  under  Joynes's 
house.  Little  gifts  such  as  our  humble  purses  could  afford  cemented 
our  friendship  ;  I  still  possess  and  treasure  an  abbreviated  edition 
of  Froissart's  Chronicles  which  Algernon  gave  me  now,  alas  !  sixty- 
six  years  ago.  We  ourselves  were  abbreviated  editions  in  those 
days,  or  rather  duodecimos  ! 

It  was  at  Eton  that  he  began  to  feel  his  wings.  His  bringing 
up  at  home  had  been  scrupulously  strict — his  literary  diet  the 


Eton  71 

veriest  pap.  His  precocious  brain  had  been  nourished  upon  food 
for  babes.  Not  a  novel  had  he  been  allowed  to  open,  not  even 
Walter  Scott's.  Shakespeare  he  only  knew  through  the  medium 
of  his  precious  brown  Bowdler.  Now  he  could  travel  over  all  the 
wide  range  of  the  boys'  library,  which  was  then  alongside  of  the 
entrance  to  the  Provost's  Lodge  in  Weston's  Yard. 

I  can  see  him  now,  sitting  perched  up  Turk-or-tailor-wise  in  one 
of  the  windows  looking  out  on  the  Yard,  with  some  huge  old-world 
tome  almost  as  big  as  himself  on  his  lap,  the  afternoon  sun  setting 
on  fire  the  great  mop  of  red  hair.  There  it  was  that  he  emanci- 
pated himself,  making  acquaintance  with  Shakespeare  (minus 
Bowdler),  Marlowe,  Spenser,  Ben  Jonson,  Ford,  Massinger,  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  and  the  other  poets  and  playwrights  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  His  tendency  was  greatly 
towards  the  drama,  especially  the  Tragic  Drama.  He  had  a  great 
sense  of  humour  in  others  ;  he  worshipped  Dickens  and  would 
quote  him  (especially  Mrs.  Gamp)  un weary ingly  ;  but  his  own 
genius  leaned  to  Tragedy. 

It  is  absurd  to  pretend,  as  was  said  in  a  letter  to  the  Times, 
that  as  a  boy  "  he  had  an  extraordinarily  wide  knowledge  of  the 
Greek  poets,  which  he  read  with  ease  in  the  original."  His  study 
of  the  Greek  tragedians,  upon  whose  work  he  so  largely  modelled 
his  own,  came  much  later  in  life.  At  Eton  these  were  lessons, 
and  lessons  are  odious  ;  besides  no  one  can  assimilate  ^Eschylus 
in  homoeopathic  doses  of  thirty  lines,  and  he  knew  no  more  Greek 
than  any  intelligent  boy  of  his  age  would  do,  nor  did  he  take  any 
prominent  part  in  the  regular  school  work,  though  he  was  a  Prince 
Consort's  prizeman  for  modern  languages.  His  first  love  in 
literature  was  given  to  the  English  poets,  and  after  or  together 
with  these  he  devoured  the  great  classics  of  France  and  Italy. 
The  foundations  of  his  searching  knowledge  of  the  French  and 
Italian  languages  were  laid  by  his  accomplished  mother.  Of 
German  he  was  ignorant,  so  Goethe,  Schiller,  Herder,  Wieland 
were  sealed  books  to  him.  We  may  doubt  whether  they  would 
have  appealed  to  him,  for  he  was  essentially  a  classicist ;  he 
might  have  been  better  in  touch  with  Schlegel  and  Novalis,  as  more 
nearly  akin  to  the  romanticists  wbom  he  loved,  among  whom 


72  Memories 

Victor  Hugo  was  the  object  of  his  special  reverence  ;  but  that 
which  I  should  call  the  Gothic  in  literature  might  never  have 
existed  for  aught  that  he  cared. 

How  much  he  owed  to  his  mother  !  Lady  Jane  was  an  attractive 
and  most  distinguished  woman.  Her  conversation  was  delightful, 
for  her  mind  was  a  rich  storehouse  of  all  that  was  good  and  beautiful, 
and  her  rare  gift  of  imparting  what  she  knew  was  reflected  in  the 
bright  light  of  the  genius  of  her  son  and  pupil. 

His  memory  was  wonderful,  his  power  of  quotation  almost 
unlimited.  We  used  to  take  long  walks  together  in  Windsor 
Forest  and  in  the  Home  Park,  where  the  famous  oak  of  Herne 
the  Hunter  was  still  standing,  a  white,  lightning-blasted  skeleton 
of  a  tree,  a  fitting  haunt  for  "  fairies  black,  grey,  green  and  white," 
and  a  very  favourite  goal  of  our  expeditions.  As  he  walked  with 
his  peculiar  dancing  gait,  tripping  along  like  a  young  faun,  his 
eyes  gleaming  with  enthusiasm,  his  whole  body  quivering  with 
excitement,  and  his  hair,  like  the  zazzera  of  his  own  beloved  old 
Florentines,  tossed  about  by  the  wind,  he  would  pour  out  with 
that  unforgettable  voice  of  his  the  treasures  which  he  had  gathered 
at  his  last  sitting  in  his  favourite  window-nook. 

Other  boys  would  watch  him  with  amazement,  looking  upon  him 
as  a  sort  of  inspired  elfin — a  changeling  from  another  sphere.  None 
dreamt  of  interfering  with  him,  and  as  for  bullying,  there  was  none 
of  it.  He  carried  with  him  one  magic  charm — he  was  absolutely 
brave.  He  did  not  know  what  fear  meant.  It  is  generally  the 
coward,  the  weakling  in  character,  far  more  than  the  weakling  in 
thews  and  sinews,  that  is  bullied.  Swinburne's  pluck  as  a  boy 
always  reminds  me  of  Kinglake's  description  in  "  Eothen  "  of  Dr. 
Keate,  the  famous  Head  Master  of  Eton  :  "  He  was  little  more 
(if  more  at  all)  than  five  feet  in  height,  and  was  not  very  great  in 
girth,  but  within  this  space  was  concentrated  the  pluck  of  ten 
battalions."  That  might  have  been  written  of  Swinburne,  and 
tiny  as  he  was,  I  verily  believe  that  had  any  boy,  however  big, 
attempted  to  bully  him,  that  boy  would  have  caught  a  Tartar. 

Of  games  he  took  no  heed — they  were  not  for  his  frail  build  ; 
iootball  and  cricket  were  nothing  to  him.  I  do  not  think  that  he 
ever  possessed  a  cricket  bat ;  but  he  could  swim  like  any  frog  and 


Eton  73 

of  walking  he  never  tired.  And  so  he  led  a  sort  of  charmed  life, 
dreaming  and  reading,  and  chewing  the  cud  of  his  gleanings  from 
the  world-harvest  of  poetry,  a  fairy  child  in  the  midst  of  a  common- 
place, workaday  world — as  Horace  said  of  himself,  "  non  sine  Dis 
animosus  infans." 

I  have  spoken  of  his  courage.  He  was  no  horseman,  and  had 
but  little  opportunity  at  home  for  riding,  but  in  the  matter  of  horses 
he  was  absolutely  without  terror.  Unskilled  as  he  was,  he  would 
back  anything,  as  fearless  as  a  centaur.  As  a  boy,  rides  with  his 
cousin,  Lady  Katherine  Ashburnham,  were  among  his  great  delights 
in  that  glorious,  forest-like  country  about  Ashburnham  Place.  My 
uncle,  the  great  book-lover,  had  an  instinctive  appreciation  of  his 
genius  long  before  he  was  famous,  and  always  had  a  we1  come 
for  him. 

There  is  no  truth  in  the  story,  coined  I  know  not  how,  that  Swin- 
burne disliked  Eton.  The  poet  was  not  made  of  the  stuff  which 
moulds  the  enthusiastic  schoolboy,  and  I  much  doubt  whether  any 
school  would,  as  such,  have  appealed  to  him.  But  Eton  stands  by 
itself.  Its  old  traditions  and  its  chivalrous  memories,  its  glorious 
surroundings,  meant  for  him  something  more  than  mere  school : 
his  mind  dwelt  upon  the  old  grey  towers,  Windsor,  the  Forest,  the 
Brocas,  the  Thames,  Cuckoo  Weir,  with  an  affection  which  inspired 
his  "  Commemoration  Ode,"  and  which,  I  believe,  never  left  him. 
The  place  touched  his  poet's  soul  as  no  other  school  could  have  done, 
and  so  it  fitted  him. 

Across  all  these  decades  I  look  back  to  the  time  when  he  and  I 
were  very  small  boys.  There  came  a  moment  when  fate  drove  us 
apart.  We  never  had  a  quarrel,  and  no  cross  word  ever  passed 
between  us,  but  I  became  a  colleger,  and  between  collegers  and 
oppidans  there  was  a  great  gulf  fixed.  By  the  time  that  I  once 
more  went  back  to  be  an  oppidan,  Swinburne  had  left  Eton  and  our 
paths  in  life  drifted  further  and  further  apart.  Only  once  in  after 
life  did  we  meet.  It  was  one  evening  at  dinner  at  Whistler's.  We 
went  on  one  side  together  after  dinner,  and  had  one  of  those  long 
talks  over  old  days  that  are  dear  to  schoolfellows'  hearts.  We 
arranged  to  meet  again  a  few  days  later,  but  he  was  ailing,  and  could 
not  keep  the  appointment — alas  !  Sunt  lachrymce  rerum  ' 


74  Memories 

I  never  saw  him  again.  He  lies  in  the  lovely  churchyard  at 
Bonchurch  with  his  father  and  the  mother  whom  he  tenderly  loved, 
within  sound  of  the  roaring  of  the  sea  which  during  all  his  life  was 
to  him  the  sweetest  of  God's  music. 

I  have  only  noticed  the  most  prominent  of  my  schoolmates, 
but  there  is  one  more  whom  I  must  mention,  Sir  Francis  Burnand, 
who  for  so  many  years  led  the  merriment  of  the  nation.  Did  I 
talk  of  memories  ?  Here  at  least  is  no  memory,  but  a  "  happy 
thought,"  for  he  still  lives,  as  gay,  as  bright,  as  laughter-loving  and 
laughter-compelling  as  when  he  was  a  fourth-form  boy.  He  remains 
the  real  Peter  Pan,  the  bov  who  will  not  grow  old. 

If  it  be  true  that  the  mountains  in  labour  produce  a  ridiculous 
mouse,  it  is  equally  true  that  out  of  the  smallest  of  molehills  there 
are  sometimes  born  colossal  elephants.  Some  time  in  1848  there 
appeared  one  day  as  a  new  boy  a  tall,  handsome  slip  of  a  lad,  very 
good-natured,  very  raw,  fresh  caught  from  Australia,  as  green  as 
young  wheat — George  Salting.  He  was  a  good  deal  chaffed,  never 
teased  or  bullied,  he  was  too  good  for  that.  The  spirit  of  the 
collector  was  born  in  him,  and  the  foundation  of  the  treasures  which 
he  amassed  was  laid  in  the  purchase  of  half  a  walnut -shell.  It 
happened  in  this  wise.  We  lower  boys  used  to  delight  at  the  proper 
season  of  the  year  in  fighting  one  shell  against  another.  The  con- 
quering shell  had  the  right  to  lay  to  its  account  not  only  the  beaten 
enemy  but  also  all  the  other  shells  which  that  particular  enemy 
had  defeated.  One  day  there  appeared  at  "  the  wall "  in  Long 
Walk  a  famous  "  cad  "  of  those  days,  who  produced  a  half-shell 
which  had  gained  a  thousand  victories.  Salting,  always  plentifully 
provided  with  money,  gave  five  shillings  for  it. 

Alas  !  the  champion  was  shortly  afterwards  dethroned  by  a  vulgar 
novice  which  had  come  into  its  owner's  possession  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  eating.  Goliath  was  not  a  greater  disappointment  to  the 
Philistine  army.  But,  never  mind  !  out  of  that  wonderful  walnut- 
shell  came  in  due  course  all  the  gems  with  which  the  National 
Gallery  and  the  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum  have  been  enriched. 
Stand  before  Holbein's  miniature  of  Anne  of  Cleves,  Henry  the 


Eton  75 

Eighth's  "  great  Flanders  mare,"  and  think  of  that.  From  the 
walnut-shell,  to  borrow  the  famous  word  of  Marechal  Macmahon, 
he  continued,*  and  if  in  his  early  days  as  a  collector  he  was  often  a 
prey  to  unscrupulous  dealers,  he  ended  by  gaining  experience  and 
became  a  good  judge.  Many  were  the  practical  jokes  of  which,  as 
a  boy,  he  was  the  good-humoured  victim. 

One  fine  September  evening — it  must  have  been  in  1850  or  1851  ; 
we  had  just  come  back  from  the  summer  holidays — a  knot  of 
younger  boys  were  gathered  together  at  the  end  of  Keate's  Lane, 
and  there  was  a  grand  recital  of  all  the  great  events  that  had  hap- 
pened in  the  halcyon  days.  One  boy  had  killed  a  salmon,  another 
had  been  out  cub-hunting,  a  third  had  been  out  partridge-shooting 
with  his  father  on  the  ist.  Salting  announced  that  he  too  had  been 
out  shooting  on  the  ist.  He  was  asked  what  he  had  shot. 

"  I  shot  a  yellowhammer,"  was  the  answer. 

"  What  !  "  cried  a  small  mosquito,  "  you  don't  mean  to  say  that ! 
Don't  you  know  what  you  have  done  ?  "  (Salting  turned  a  little 
pale.)  "  Don't  you  know  that  after  the  battle  of  Waterloo  King 
George  the  Third  gave  the  Duke  of  Wellington  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  shooting  yellowhammers  on  the  first  of  September  ? 
You  had  better  write  an  apology  at  once,  or  there's  no  saying  what 
may  happen."  All  the  boys  put  on  very  serious  faces,  and  poor 
Salting  was  fairly  terrified.  A  letter  was  drafted  in  which  Mr. 
Salting  presented  his  compliments  to  Field-Marshal  the  Duke  ot 
Wellington,  K.G.,  and  in  stilted  terms  implored  forgiveness  for  an 
offence  unwittingly  given.  Two  or  three  days  later  the  answer 
came  in  which  Field-Marshal  the  Duke  of  Wellington  presented  his 
compliments  to  Mr.  Salting,  with  the  assurance  that  in  the  circum- 
stances, etc.,  etc.  The  offence  was  solemnly  forgiven.  Two 
Sundays  later  I  was  invited  by  old  Sir  Charles  Mills,  grandfather  of 
the  present  Lord  Hillingdon,  to  dine  and  sleep  at  Hillingdon.  Mr. 
Algernon  Greville,  the  Duke's  private  secretary,  was  there.  I  asked 

*  At  a  distribution  of  prizes  at  one  of  the  public  schools  at  Paris,  as  boy 
after  boy  was  brought  up,  he  said,  "  Continue/,  jeune  homme  !  Premier 
pnx  de  mathematiques,  tres  bien.  Continuez,  jeune  homme."  At  last  a. 
Haytian  boy  was  brought  up  to  him.  "  Ah,  c'est  vousle  negre.  Continuez, 
jeune  homme,  continuez  !  " 


7^  Memories 

him  whether  the  Duke  of  Wellington  had  really  received  and 
answered  the  letter.  Mr.  Greville  said  that  the  Duke  had  not  only 
received  the  letter,  but,  suspecting  the  joke,  and  greatly  amused  by 
it,  insisted  on  answering  it  himself.  Here  would  have  been  a  begin- 
ning for  a  collection  of  autographs  !  But  Salting's  tutor  got  hold 
of  the  letter  and  kept  it  ! 

To  the  end  of  his  life  I  kept  up. a  sort  of  fitful  friendship  with  that 
amiable  man.  Slim,  tall,  and  handsome  in  appearance,  he  altered 
very  little.  The  last  time  that  I  saw  him  was  not  very  long  before 
his  death.  I  met  him  in  King  Street,  just  outside  Christie  and 
Manson's,  where  some  sale  was  going  on.  We  stopped  and  talked, 
and  I  could  not  help  noticing  that,  barring  the  long  beard,  it  was 
still  the  old  Salting  of  the  yellowhammer  days. 

There  was  one  project  which  lay  very  near  to  Dr.  Hawtrey's  heart. 
Between  the  oppidans  and  the  collegers  there  was  a  great  gulf 
fixed.  To  bridge  this  over  was  his  ambition.  I  have  shown  how 
Provost  Hodgson  and  he  had  done  much  to  improve  the  lives  of  the 
boys  on  the  foundation.  It  had  cost  them  infinite  pains,  and  in  his 
case  great  pecuniary  sacrifices ;  of  that  he  took  little  heed,  for  he 
was  always  open-handed,  and  to  give  was  for  him  a  necessity.  By 
curtailing  the  Long  Chamber  and  the  erection  of  the  new  buildings 
in  Weston's  Yard,  and  by  other  corollary  reforms,  they  had  given 
the  collegers  a  measure  of  decency  and  comfort  which  they  had 
never  enjoyed  before.  Hawtrey  thought  that  the  time  had  come 
when,  with  the  help  of  these  altered  conditions,  he  could  amalga- 
mate Eton  into  one  uniform  whole,  collegers  and  oppidans,  one  body 
with  one  soul  and  one  spirit,  all  invidious  distinctions  swept  away, 
all  jealousies  stifled  and  done  with.  His  plan  was  to  get  a  number 
of  boys  who  had  already  been  some  years  in  the  school  and  had 
therefore  made  their  friends  among  the  oppidans  to  compete  for 
college.  He  thought  that  in  this  way  he  would  be  introducing  a 
leaven  of  intimacy  between  the  two  camps.  In  my  time,  at  any 
rate,  it  was  a  complete  failure.  The  only  result  was  that  the  new- 
comers lost  their  oppidan  friends,  while  from  the  old  college  hands 
they  received  but  a  cold  welcome.  I  was  one  of  the  vile  bodies 
upon  which  the  experiment  was  tried,  and  that  is  how  I  lost  my 
intimacy  with  Swinburne. 


Eton  77 

Dr.  Hawtrey's  influence  with  my.  father  was  immense,  and  for 
some  two  years  I  became  a  colleger.  I  can  honestly  say  that  during 
that  time  I  never  was  inside  any  oppidan's  room,  nor  do  I  remember 
ever  having  an  oppidan  to  visit  me,  or  any  other  colleger.  During 
the  last  year  and  a  half  of  my  Eton  days,  when  I  was  already  in 
sixth  form,  I  went  back  to  be  an  oppidan,  and  Evans's  house  being 
full,  was  sent  to  Mrs.  Voysey's,  who  was  a  new  dame.  In  the  mean- 
time Provost  Hodgson  had  died  in  1852,  and  was  succeeded  by  Dr. 
Hawtrey,  to  my  deep  regret,  for  he  was  followed  as  Head  Master 
by  Dr.  Goodford,  and  in  a  schoolroom  over  which  that  dull  and 
drowsy  man  presided  there  was  little  joy. 

Once,  I  remember,  he  woke  up  from  one  of  his  naps  (vigilant  naps 
they  were,  for  if  one  of  us  blundered  he  was  wide-awake  in  a 
moment),  and  was  minded  to  be  grotesquely  humorous.  Someone 
was  construing,  I  forget  what,  when  all  of  a  sudden  he  suggested  as 
a  translation,  "  Oh,  dear  !  what  can  the  matter  be  ?  "  and  asked 
whether  any  of  us  could  quote  the  next  line.  One  suggested  a 
repetition  of  the  same  line  ;  another  "  Johnnie's  so  long  at  the  fair." 
"  Wrong  !  Quite  wrong,"  he  said,  "  the  second  line  is  '  Dear  ! 
Dear  !  What  can  the  matter  be  ?  '  Dismally  he  grinned  at  his 
own  fun,  which  did  not  raise  even  a  i-.ycophantic  smile,  and  then 
composed  himself  once  more  to  "  yet  a.  little  sleep,  a  little  slumber,  a 
little  folding  of  the  hands  to  sleep."  And  so  the  dreary  pedagogic 
round  droned  on.  What  would  I  not  give  now  to  have  had  the 
privilege  of  passing  that  year  and  a  half  under  the  illuminating 
tuition  of  Dr.  Hawtrey  !  What  a  gift  to  be  able  to  teach  and  in 
teaching  please — practically  to  strike  out  from  the  dictionary  th  • 
hateful  word  "  lessons  !  " 


CHAPTER  IV 

SUMMER     HOLIDAYS 

AN  CARBONE  NOTANDI  ?  "  The  summer 
\^/  holidays  of  1851  shall  be  "  noted  "  with  the  whitest  of  chalk. 
The  first  three  or  four  days  were  spent  in  London  exploring  the 
treasures  and  wonders  of  the  Fairy  Palace  which  the  imagination 
of  the  Prince  Consort  and  the  talent  of  Paxton  called  up  in  Hyde 
Park — of  which  Sydenham  gives  no  conception.  It  was  but  a 
baby  compared  with  the  great  exhibitions — labyrinthine  cities  in 
themselves — by  which  it  was  followed — but  it  was  so  graceful,  so 
delicate,  so  airy,  that  its  translucent  beauty  remains  graven  on  my 
memory  as  something  which  must  defy  all  rivalry.  When  first  I 
saw  it  glittering  in  the  morning  sun,  I  felt  as  if  Aladdin  and  the 
Jin  who  was  the  slave  of  the  lamp  must  have  been  at  work  upon  it 
— no  mere  human  hands  and  hammers  and  builders'  tools  could  have 
wrought  such  a  miracle.  A  single  relic  marks  the  site  :  one  of  the 
two  great  elms  which  were  enclosed  in  it,  now  a  feeble  old  truncated 
pollard,  piously  fenced  in  by  the  care  of  those  who  rule  the  Park, 
still  stands  in  the  great  stretch  of  grass  opposite  the  Knightsbridge 
Barracks  ;  its  mate  sickened  and  died. 

There  were  two  exhibits  which  struck  my  boyish  imagination  : 
one  the  great  crystal  fountain  in  the  centre  of  the  building — the 
sun  was  shining  gloriously,  charming  all  the  jewels  of  the  world  into 
the  plashing  water — it  seemed  to  me  a  dream  of  beauty.  The  other 
was  Koh-i-Nur,  in  the  cutting  of  which  the  great  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton took  so  much  interest ;  its  fire  has  now  been  eclipsed  by  the 
mightier  light  of  that  wonder-stone,  the  Cullinane  diamond,  but  the 
poetry  of  its  story  remains  now,  as  it  was  then,  one  of  the  great 

78 


Summer  Holidays  79 


traditions  of  the  gorgeous  East,  reaching  back  into  legendary  times, 
when  there  were  still  Afrits  to  do  the  bidding  of  King  Solomon. 
No  stone  newly  found  in  the  blue  earth  of  Africa  can  dim  the  magic 
halo  of  Eastern  romance,  or  blur  the  succession  of  pictures  which 
the  crystal-gazer  should  see  in  the  mystic  depths  of  the  Mountain  of 
Light — all  the  glamour  of  "  the  thousand  nights  and  one." 

But  it  is  idle  to  talk  of  this  or  of  that  exhibit,  or  even  of  many. 
There  were  things  beautiful,  and  things  hideous,  for  art  at  that 
moment  had  sunk  very  low  ;  but  the  general  effect  of  beauty  and 
airy  grace,  together  with  the  delicate  framework  and  brilliancy  of 
the  whole  structure,  was  indelible — unlike  its  more  modern  successors 
its  size  was  not  so  great  as  to  prevent  one  from  gaining  a  general 
impression  of  the  whole,  and  that  was  a  joyous,  sensuous  revelling 
in  a  palace  of  light.  Even  those  whom  I  remember  scoffing  at  the 
idea  when  it  was  first  mooted  were  compelled  to  admit  that  it  was  a 
great  conception  nobly  carried  out ;  it  was  a  triumph  of  which  the 
present  Crystal  Palace  gives  no  conception.  The  transfer  to  Syden- 
ham  and  the  increase  in  size  seemed  at  once  to  vulgarize  it. 

Great  were  the  joys  of  the  Exhibition  !  but  there  were  greater 
yet  in  store  for  me  in  the  first  sight  of  the  richly  fabled  Rhineland, 
where,  after  a  few  happy  days  in  London,  I  was  to  join  my  father. 
Those  were  times  when  the  "  Pilgrims  of  the  Rhine  "  wandered 
through  a  realm  of  romance  and  poetry  untouched  by  the  vulgar 
hand  of  utilitarianism.  The  air  that  we  breathed  was  as  pure, 
as  nipping,  and  as  eager  as  that  which  many  centuries  ago  floated 
round  the  Dragon's  rock  and  the  eyrie  from  which  the  brave 
Roland  looked  down  upon  the  island  convent — the  prison  of  all 
that  he  held  dearest  upon  earth. 

Now  tall  chimneys  cut  up  the  lovely  views,  belching  out  sul- 
phurous vapours  upon  the  castles  and  fastnesses  of  the  old  Robber 
Knights.  Factories  and  huge  industries  darken  the  blue  of  the 
sky.  The  siren  song  of  the  Lorelei  is  no  longer  heard  from  the 
rock  where  she  used  to  sit  "  combing  her  golden  locks  with  a  golden 
comb,"  and  luring  the  benighted  fisherman  to  his  doom  ;  she 
has  fled,  Heaven  knows  whither,  scared  by  the  prose  of  a  cruel 
century ;  the  clang  of  the  Nibelungen's  hammer  and  anvil  has 
ceased  to  beat  in  the  dark  caverns  of  the  earth.  Giants  and 


8o  Memories 

dwarfs  have  disappeared,  and  the  Rheingold  is  now  won  by  methods 
in  which  there  is  neither  beauty  nor  romance,  nor  fairy  lore.  What 
was  the  Wacht  am  Rhein  about,  that  it  did  not  strike  a  blow  to 
hinder  the  defiling  of  the  sacred  river  ?  It  has  been  fierce  enough 
against  the  Frenchman  ;  could  it  do  nothing  to  stay  the  hand 
of  the  sacrilegious  German  money-spinner  ? 

Last  year  (May,  1914)  I  took  a  novice  to  view  the  scenes  which 
had  cast  a  spell  over  my  young  enthusiasm.  He  was  disappointed, 
and  I  could  not  wonder  at  it.  No  crucible  of  the  imagination 
can  weld  together  Manchester  and  the  Sieben  Gebirge. 

In  1851  life  on  the  Rhine  sped  like  a  happy  dream.  My  father 
made  Coblenz  our  headquarters,  and  we  made  many  delightful 
expeditions  ;  among  others,  a  trip  by  steamer  up  to  Bingen  and 
thence  across  the  river  into  the  lovely  Schweitzer  Thai,  which, 
lying  as  it  does  just  out  of  the  beaten  track,  is  so  seldom  seen. 

It  was  no  mere  chance  that  made  my  father  choose  Coblenz 
for  our  temporary  abode.  Mrs.  Bradshaw  was  living  there  with 
her  son-in-law  and  daughter,  and  she  had  been  a  great  friend  of 
my  father  and  mother.  When  I  knew  her,  she  was  an  old  lady 
and  quite  blind,  bearing  her  affliction  with  that  gentle  patience 
which  is  so  usual  with  those  who  are  thus  punished.  She  still  had 
the  delicately  cut  features  and  charm  of  manner  which  had  made 
her  famous  in  her  youth  ;  for  she  was  no  less  a  person  than  Miss 
Maria  Tree,  the  singer  and  actress  who  took  all  London  by  storm 
when  on  the  8th  of  May,  1823,  she  "  created,"  as  the  phrase  now 
goes,  "  Home,  Sweet  Home,"  hi  the  opera  of  Clari  by  Sir  Henry 
Bishop.  The  words  were  by  John  Howard  Payne,  an  American 
author,  paraphrased  from  lines  by  T.  Haynes  Bayly,  the  author 
of  "  I'd  be  a  Butterfly,"  a  song  now  probably  forgotten,  but  in 
my  childhood  almost  as  popular  as  "  Home,  Sweet  Home,"  itself 
— especially  in  seminaries  such  as  that  of  the  Misses  Pinkerton 
on  Chiswick  Mall.  It  is  said  that  the  motive  of  the  air  was  taken 
from  a  Sicilian  melody  :  be  that  as  it  may,  it  has  been  so  long 
naturalized  that  it  lives  as  something  purely  English.  It  will 
always  be  associated  with  Patti,  but  Maria  Tree,  who  first  made 
it  live,  should  not  be  forgotten. 

The    libretto    of    Clari  was    based   upon  the  old,  old  tragedy 


Summer  Holidays  81 

It  was  the  story  of  a  beautiful  girl,  who  after  some  months  of 
luxurious  misery  in  a  city,  comes  back  to  seek  peace  in  her  village 
home.  I  have  often  heard  my  father  and  Mr.  Henry  Greville 
say  what  a  dream  of  fascination  she  was  when  with  her  wide- 
brimmed  straw  hat,  slung  by  a  ribbon  to  her  arm — looking  like  a 
dainty  picture  by  Morland — she  came  forward  and  in  her  sweet 
voice — a  voice  which  in  speaking  retained  its  charm  to  the  end — 
sadly  warbled  the  pathetic  song.  The  town  was  conquered  and 
there  was  not  a  dry  eye  in  the  house. 

In  circumstances  so  romantic  that  even  at  this  distance  of  time 
it  would  be  indiscreet  to  mention  them,  she  won  the  heart  of  Mr. 
Bradshaw — the  Jemmy  Bradshaw  of  contemporary  memoirs — 
one  of  the  great  dandies  of  the  early  days  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
a  friend  of  the  Prince  Regent.  It  was  a  happy  marriage,  and 
there  was  one  beautiful  daughter,  who  became  the  wife  of  Captain 
Langley,  an  officer  in  the  2nd  Life  Guards.  They  were  as  hand 
some  a  couple  as  could  be  seen — and  they  were  made  very  wel- 
come in  the  society  of  Coblenz.  The  sympathy  of  the  sword  and 
great  personal  charm  were  a  passport  to  the  friendship  of  the 
very  smart  garrison. 

I  can  see  Mrs.  Bradshaw  coming  into  the  room  tapping  her 
way  with  her  stick.  Gracious  and  kind  she  always  was,  and  her 
poor  dim  eyes,  that  used  to  laugh  so  merrily,  had  not  forgotten  how 
to  smile  a  welcome.  Many  happy  hours  I  spent  as  a  boy  and 
afterwards  as  a  young  man  in  her  house  in  the  Schloss-Strasse. 

During  the  fifties,  the  old  Emperor  William,  his  brother  being 
still  alive,  was  military  governor  or  viceroy  of  Rhenan  Prussia 
and  Westphalia,  and  held  his  Court  at  Coblenz.  Both  he  and  his 
Princess,  afterwards  the  Empress  Augusta,  were  most  graciously 
kind  to  foreigners.  My  father  was  a  frequent  guest  at  the  Palace, 
and  even  I,  though  a  mere  boy,  was  more  than  once  invited  to 
the  afternoon  coffee  parties.  Naturally  enough  the  Court  was 
a  centre  for  the  best  society  of  the  town  and  neighbourhood — 
mostly  military  and  official. 

The  Prince  was  a  handsome,  soldier-like  figure,  bluff  and  hearty, 
royal  to  his  fingers'  tips,  most  gracious  and  friendly  in  the  recep- 
tion of  his  guests.     He  was  all  his  life  the  sworn  foe  of  anarchism 
VOL.  i  6 


82  Memories 

and  socialism,  and  at  one  time  was  so  clearly  marked  as  a  probable 
object  of  attack,  that  in  March,  1848,  he  was  compelled  by  his 
brother  and  the  government  to  leave  Germany  for  a  while.  He 
remained  in  London  only  until  June,  when  he  returned  to  Berlin 
as  a  member  of  the  National  Assembly,  and  declared  himself  a 
conscientious  supporter  of  the  Constitutional  Monarchy.  He 
assumed  his  high  office  at  Coblenz  in  1849,  shortly  after  the  attempt 
upon  his  life  by  a  ruffianly  anarchist  named  Adam  Schneider  at 
Niederingelheim . 

The  certainty  that  he  must  succeed  his  brother  in  the  kingship, 
as  well  as  his  own  commanding  character  made  his  Court  very 
regal  and  very  important.  He  was  admirably  seconded  by  his 
Princess,  a  daughter  of  the  House  of  Saxe- Weimar.  The  Empress 
Augusta,  to  give  her  the  title  by  which  she  is  best  known,  was 
in  1851  a  graceful,  still  very  attractive  lady,  in  spite  of  her  forty 
years.  She  was  a  woman  of  refined  accomplishments,  a  scientific 
musician,  a  great  lover  of  art.  She  was  very  well  read,  especially 
in  French  literature,  and  kept  a  French  reader,  M.  Guillard, 
attached  to  her  household.  She  preferred  Victor  Hugo,  Balzac, 
Lamartine,  Alexandre  Dumas  and  the  English  writers  to  the 
dull  dogmatics  of  the  German  schoolmen  of  that  day.  Bismarck 
complained  not  a  little  of  her  foreign  predilections,  and 
considered  that  she  was  far  too  much  inclined  to  belittle  what 
was  German  in  favour  of  exotic  literature. 

The  truth  was  that  the  two  natures  were  not  sympathetic  :  she 
was  highly  strung  and  aesthetic — in  him  not  even  Paris  and  St. 
Petersburg  (now  Petrograd)  had  been  able  to  polish  the  roughness 
of  the  diamond.  When  the  fateful  episode  at  Ems  occurred,  the 
plain-spoken  statesman  did  not  conceal  his  fear  lest  the  King 
should  come  under  the  influence  of  the  Queen,  who  was  hard  by 
at  her  beloved  Coblenz.  At  any  rate,  she  made  the  Princely  Court 
gay  and  very  agreeable,  and  Bismarck  was  able  to  console  himself 
with  the  reflection  that  his  policy — I  am  now  speaking  of  nineteen 
years  before  the  great  war — had  a  strenuous  supporter  in  the 
Prince's  right-hand  man,  Count  Karl  Von  der  Goltz. 

Prince  Frederick,  the  future  hero  of  so  many  pitched  battles, 
the  father  of  the  present  Kaiser,  was  a  tall,  fair,  handsome  stripling, 


Summer  Holidays  83 


beardless  and  very  young  looking,  who  a  year  or  two  later  confided 
to  my  father  that  he  was  "  almost  engaged  "  to  our  Princess 
Royal.  His  sister,  Princess  Louise,  still  alive  as  Grand  Duchess 
of  Baden,  was  a  lovely  maiden,  such  as  Perrault  might  have 
imagined,  or  Madame  d'Aulnoy  portrayed. 

The  ladies-  and  gentlemen-in-waiting  were  well  qualified  to 
turn  what  might  have  been  a  very  dull  Court  into  an  intimate 
little  coterie,  enlivened  by  private  theatricals  in  French,  music, 
readings  and  other  amusements  ;  it  was  very  dignified  in  that  there 
was  nothing  frivolous  about  it,  but  it  was  never  stiff  and  never  dull. 

The  two  ladies  were  Countess  Haack — elderly,  and  if  the  truth 
must  be  told,  rather  plain — and  Countess  Oriolla,  a  beauty  who 
preferred  maiden  meditation  to  matrimony,  and  would  not  be  won. 

Count  Karl  Von  der  Goltz  was,  owing  to  his  confidential  position 
with  the  Prince,  a  real  influence  in  Germany — an  influence  recog- 
nized by  Bismarck  himself,  and  of  him  I  should  like  to  say  a  few 
words.  In  his  "  Gedanken  und  Erinnerungen  "  the  great  man 
describes  him  as  "an  elegant  and  smart  officer  of  the  Guards, 
a  Prussian  to  the  core  (Stock-Preusse) ,  and  courtier,  who  took 
no  more  heed  of  the  rest  of  Germany  outside  of  Prussia  than  his 
position  about  the  Court  involved.  He  was  a  man  of  the  world, 
rode  well  to  hounds,  handsome,  a  favourite  with  women,  a  past 
master  in  courtly  etiquette  ;  politics  were  not  the  first  considera- 
tion with  him,  but  were  only  a  means  to  his  ends  at  Court.  No- 
body knew  better  than  he  did  that  the  recollection  of  Olmiitz  was 
the  right  incentive  to  win  over  the  Prince  and  induce  him  to  take 
a  hand  in  the  fight  against  Manteuffel,  and  he  had  plenty  of  oppor- 
tunities both  when  travelling  and  at  home  of  making  the  best 
use  of  this  spur  to  the  feelings  of  the  Prince." 

Count  Von  der  Goltz's  brother  Robert  was  the  first  instigator 
of  the  Bethmann-Hollweg  coalition  against  Manteuffel.  He  was 
a  man  of  unusual  talent  and  energy  "  with  whose  active  capacity 
Manteuffel  had  the  tactlessness  to  deal  imprudently."  (Bismarck 
ut  supra.) 

To    Bismarck,    Olmiitz    was    the    bitterest    of    thoughts.     Two 
years  after  the  Emperor  Ferdinand  had  there  abdicated  in  favour 
of  his  nephew,  Francis  Joseph,  Prince  Schwarzenberg,  on  behalf 
VOL.  i  6* 


84  Memories 

of  Austria,  and  Manteuffel,  as  plenipotentiary  for  Prussia,  met 
there  and  came  to  the  agreement  known  as  the  "  Olmutzer  Punk- 
tation  " — which  at  a  moment  when  war  seemed  inevitable,  settled 
the  differences  between  the  two  Powers,  but  entirely  in  favour  of 
Austria. 

It  was  the  life's  aim  and  ambition  of  Bismarck  to  undo  Man- 
teuffel's  work,  and  to  assert  Prussia  as  the  leading  Power  among 
the  Teuton  peoples  by  uniting  all  the  German  States,  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  Austria,  under  her  hegemony.  In  May,  1851,  he  was 
appointed  secretary  to  the  Prussian  representative  at  the  Diet, 
and  three  months  later  was  promoted  to  be  himself  representative. 

His  first  move  against  Austria  was  characteristic.  It  had  been 
the  custom  at  the  social  gatherings  of  the  Diet  for  the  Austrian 
delegate  to  give  the  signal  for  smoking.  Bismarck  took  an  early 
opportunity  of  lighting  his  own  cigar  first,  politely  offering  a  match 
to  Count  Thun,  his  Austrian  colleague.  It  was  the  bursting  of  a 
bombshell,  and  the  incident,  apparently  so  trivial,  was  electric. 
Everyone  present  knew  what  was  meant.  That  match  lit  a  flame 
which  was  only  extinguished  fifteen  years  later  at  Sadowa. 

The  hatred  of  Manteuffel  and  his  policy  was  the  secret  of  Bis- 
marck's admiration  for  the  brothers  Von  der  Goltz  ;  for  in  the 
handsome  courtier,  Count  Karl,  he  recognized  an  ally  almost,  if 
not  quite,  as  powerful  as  the  statesman  and  diplomatist  Count 
Robert.  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  two  men  more  different 
than  the  polished  guardsman  and  the  rough,  unkempt  man-of- 
affairs,  but  they  were  both,  to  use  Bismarck's  own  expression 
"  Stock-Preussen."  Olmiitz  was  to  both  a  haunting  memory,  and, 
the  wiping  out  of  that  stain  a  sacred  duty  which  united  the  two. 

By  the  side  of  Count  Von  der  Goltz  the  two  other  gentlemen- 
in-waiting  were  less  conspicuous  figures.  He  was  always  in  the 
foreground,  and  remained  the  faithful  friend  and  servant  of  his 
old  master  all  through  the  glorious  campaigns  of  1866  and  1870, 
in  both  of  which  he  earned  great  honour  as  a  cavalry  general,  and 
having  resigned  his  high  military  commands  in  1888.  remained 
attached  as  General  aide-de-camp  to  the  Emperor  William  until 
the  old  warrior's  death  in  the  same  year.  He  himself  died  thirteen 
years  later  at  Nice,  at  the  age  of  eighty-six. 


Summer  Holidays 


His  colleagues  at  the  Court  of  Coblenz  as  I  knew  it  were  Major 
Schimmelmann,  a  handsome  giant,  who  was  very  good  to  me,  and 
another  officer,  Herr  Von  Steinacker,  a  rather  melancholy  man 
who  worshipped  the  ground  upon  which  Countess  Oriolla's  pretty 
foot  trod  ;  it  used  to  be  said  that  he  proposed  to  her  once 
a  month,  and  on  being  once  a  month  refused,  would  take  to  his 
bed  love-sick,  disconsolate,  emerging  at  the  end  of  twenty-four 
hours  to  resume  his  duties.  But  his  story  belongs  to  the  small- 
beer  chronicles  of  the  Court,  whereas  that  of  Count  Von  der  Goltz, 
like  that  of  the  glorious  Prince,  King,  Emperor,  \vhom  he  loved 
and  served,  belongs  to  the  old  October  ale  of  German  politics  and 
history,  a  heady  brew  if  ever  there  was  one. 

We  paid  several  visits  to  Coblenz  during  my  Eton  days — and 
in  1857,  when  I  was  already  twenty  years  old,  I  went  back  there 
with  a  reading-party  from  Oxford.  We  stayed  there  for  some 
five  or  six  weeks  and  then  went  on  to  that  wicked  Paradise,  Baden 
Baden.  It  was  in  the  old  days  of  the  gaming  tables — needless  to 
say,  we,  like  the  other  moths,  had  our  wings  singed,  and  when  we 
had  little  more  than  enough  to  pay  for  third-class  tickets,  fled, 
and  landed  in  Paris  with  just  about  a  hundred  francs  between  us. 
I  managed  to  get  three  rooms  in  some  obscure  back  street  in  the 
Quartier  Latin  for  thirty  francs  the  week — we  breakfasted  in  a 
cremerie  for  a  few  sous — dined  at  the  two-francs  dinner  in  the 
Palais  Royal — lived  the  vie  de  Boheme  with  the  students  and  rapins, 
who  gave  a  warm  welcome  to  Oxford,  and  when  replenishment 
of  our  purses  came  from  England,  left  our  church-mouse  poverty 
and  wild  cheery  life  with  the  greatest  regret. 

In  the  month  of  April,  1914,  I  was  hi  Germany,  with  two  days 
to  spare.  I  had  long  been  haunted  by  the  wish  once  more  to  see 
Coblenz,  the  happy  hunting-ground  of  sixty  years  ago.  How 
could  a  veteran  better  wind  up  a  holiday  than  by  fulfilling  that 
desire  ?  We  put  up  at  the  old  hotel,  "  Zum  Riesen  "  —the  Giant — 
a  caravanserai  that  I  knew  well  as  long  ago  as  my  first  visit  in 
1851.  Not  that  we  ever  lodged  there,  for  my  father  preferred  the 
"  Bellevue,"  out  of  affection  for  old  M.  Hoche,  the  proprietor, 
who  had  been  a  famous  cook  in  Paris. 

Those  were  the  days  when  the  table  d'hote  acted  up  to  its  name, 


86  Memories 

and  the  host  in  person  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table  as  Lord  of  the 
Feast ;  every  now  and  then,  as  some  special  dish  was  being  handed 
round,  M.  Hoche  would  get  up  from  his  seat  and  come  to  my 
father,  saying,  "Mangez  de  ca,  Monsieur,  j'y  ai  mis  la  main" — 
and  what  a  cunning  hand  it  was  !  and  how  cheap  was  the  excellent 
dinner  served  at  one  o'clock — fifteen  groschen  (is.  6d.)  if  you 
came  at  haphazard,  ten  groschen  if  you  were  abonne — supper  was 
d  la  carte.  These  were  the  prices  of  the  best  hotels  on  the  Rhine, 
and  they  must  have  been  just,  for  dear  old  M.  Hoche  and  his  wife 
waxed  fat  upon  them,  and  having  lived  in  great  content,  died 
leaving  a  fortune.  The  table  d'hote  at  which  the  good  old  grey, 
snuffy  generals  and  colonels  and  Herren  Geheimrdte  dined  in  state 
is  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  old  "  Bellevue  "  has  been  pulled  down 
and  has  been  replaced  by  a  gigantic  new  "  Bellevue  " — whose 
Pharaoh  knew  not  Joseph — Coblenz  has  grown  out  of  all  recollec- 
tion, and  prices  have  followed  suit. 

Here  and  there  I  found  some  old  parts  of  the  town  almost 
untouched,  and  the  view  from  the  bridge  over  the  Moselle  is  a 
relic  of  the  past,  with  its  church  spires  and  old-fashioned,  rickety 
houses,  roofed  with  brown  tiles,  weather-stained  like  the  grey 
walls  and  shutters,  as  picturesque  as  age  and  just  a  modicum  of 
dirt  and  shabbiness  can  make  them.  Here  the  character  of  the 
old  German  town  reveals  itself,  and  when  we  take  our  stand  in 
front  of  the  Giant  Hotel  and  look  out  upon  the  Rhine,  the  bridge 
of  boats  opening  to  make  way  for  some  passing  timber-raft — 
itself  its  own  cargo  from  the  depths  of  the  far-away  Black  Forest — 
when  we  look  at  the  grim  Ehrenbreitstein  with  its  batteries  frown- 
ing threats  from  its  rocky  heights — then  we  forget  all  modern  im- 
provements and  artistic  misfortunes,  and  are  once  more  in  the  old 
Rhineland. 

On  the  evening  of  our  arrival,  after  dark  the  riverside  was  gaily 
thronged  with  people  drinking  in  the  cool  evening  air  after  the  heat 
of  a  day  as  hot  as  summer.  The  stream  was  brilliant  with  the 
reflection  of  electric  lights,  but  across  the  water  on  the  awe- 
striking  fortress  there  was  just  one  lamp  to  be  seen  peering  out 
of  the  gloom  of  the  black  battlements  like  a  watchful  eye — a  strange 
and  weird  effect,  befitting  the  castle  of  an  ogre—  a  silent  BEWARE  ! 


Summer  Holidays  87 


THE    DUKE    OF   WELLINGTON  S   FUNERAL 

ON  the  eighteenth  of  November,  1852,  the  great  Duke  of 
Wellington  was  buried.  Of  course  many  boys,  myself  among 
the  number,  had  leave  to  go  up  to  London  to  see  the  funeral 
procession.  It  had  been  a  very  rainy  autumn  and  the  Thames 
was  swollen  to  an  inordinate  degree.  Eton  was  flooded  and  we 
were  taken  up  part  of  the  High  Street  in  punts.  I  believe  that 
no  such  flood  has  been  seen  since,  though  the  year  1894,  when  the 
boys  were  sent  home  on  the  seventeenth  of  November,  fell  not  far 
short  of  it. 

I  witnessed  the  funeral  from  the  first  floor  of  the  Bath  Hotel, 
which  stood  at  the  corner  of  Arlington  Street  and  Piccadilly,  at 
the  north-eastern  corner  of  the  modern  Ritz  Hotel.  I  have  since 
seen  'many  great  ceremonies,  many  magnificent  and  moving 
spectacles  in  many  lands,  but  none  that  could  be  named  in  the 
same  day  with  the  funeral  of  the  Iron  Duke.  As  a  military  display 
it  was,  of  course,  superb.  All  arms  were  represented,  and  a  brave 
show  they  made  ;  uniforms  were  far  more  gorgeous  in  those  days 
than  they  are  now  that  the  spirit  of  economy  has  cut  off  epaulettes 
and  gold  lace  from  officers,  shabracks  and  other  ornaments  from 
their  horses.  The  bands  of  the  various  regiments,  the  muffled 
roll  of  the  kettle-drums,  mysterious  in  the  distance,  heralding  the 
dirge  of  the  "  Dead  March  in  Saul,"  followed  by  the  wailing  of  the 
bagpipes  of  the  Highland  regiments  ;  the  solemnity  of  the  reversed 
arms,  the  charger  with  empty  boots — always  a  pathetic  sight 
at  a  soldier's  funeral — led  behind  the  great  bronze  car,  hung  with 
wreaths  of  cypress  and  bay,  drawn  by  twelve  black  horses,  three 
abreast,  housed  with  black  velvet  and  a  blaze  of  heraldry  ;  the 
deputations  of  splendidly  clad  foreign  officers,  following  the  car. 
All  this  appealed  to  the  imagination  of  the  huge  crowd,  often 
moving  them  to  tears,  for  they  knew  full  well  that  "  a  Prince  and 
a  great  man  was  dead  in  Israel."  Few  there  were,  even  among  the 
poorest,  who  had  not  managed  to  don  some  slight  sign  of  mourning, 
the  slighter  the  more  touching,  for  it  meant  the  more  :  a  scrap  of 
crape,  a  bit  of  black  cloth  worn  as  an  armlet  were  but  the  tokens 
of  the  real  mourning  which  was  in  men's  hearts.  He  was  such  a 


88  Memories 

familiar  sight  to  Londoners,  this  wonderful  old  hero  whom  they 
used  to  watch  riding  along  Constitution  Hill  to  and  from  the  Horse 
Guards — to  and  from  duty — to  the  last  a  spare,  lithe,  active  figure, 
smart  as  a  young  boy,  dressed  with  scrupulous  neatness,  and  even 
a  tinge  of  dandyism,  m  a  tight-fitting,  single-breasted  blue  frock 
coat,  with  spotless  white  trousers.  When  he  passed  all  men  doffed 
their  hats  as  if  he  had  been  a  king,  and  the  answering  salute  of  the 
forefinger  raised  to  the  brim  of  his  hat,  never  omitted,  never  varying, 
became  almost  historic.  Often  I  saw  him  :  he  was  a  very  old  man, 
and  the  neck  was  a  little  bent,  but  the  chiselled  face  was  still 
commanding,  and  the  fire  had  not  ceased  to  glow  in  those  eagle 
eyes,  the  finestra  dell'  anima — altogether  an  unforgettable  figure. 

London  loved  him.  Much  water,  as  the  saying  goes,  had  flowed 
under  the  bridges  since  April,  1831,  when  the  mob  broke  the  windows 
of  Apsley  House,  while  the  body  of  the  Duchess,  just  dead,  was 
lying  there  waiting  burial.  The  iron  shutters  were  the  only  signs 
left  of  the  fleeting  unpopularity  of  the  Reform  days.  The  life 
that  was  in  the  Duke,  his  activity,  his  unwearying  interest  and  the 
share  which  he  took  in  affairs  and  events  great  and  small,  from 
the  quelling  of  the  Chartist  insurrection,  only  five  years  before 
his  death,  to  the  opening  of  the  Crystal  Palace  in  Hyde  Park  in 
1851  and  the  cutting  of  the  Koh-i-Nur,  stirred  the  imagination 
and  roused  the  admiration  of  all  men,  rich  and  poor.  People 
used  to  tell  how,  when  he  and  Lord  John  Russell  were  discussing 
the  steps  to  be  taken  for  the  safety  of  London  hi  1848,  and  Lord 
John  suggested  one  measure  after  another,  the  invariable  answer 
from  the  grim  old  soldier  was,  "  Done  already."  Nothing  had 
escaped  that  wonderful  eye.  And  so  he  became,  as  it  were,  a  super- 
man, and  when  he  died  men  looked  around  them  and  there  was 
none  found  to-  fill  the  gap. 

As  the  great  funeral  car  passed  opposite  the  window  where  I 
was,  one  of  the  wreaths  of  cypress  and  bay  leaves  fell  off.  So  soon 
as  the  last  soldier  closing  the  procession  had  disappeared,  a  poor 
old  woman  dashed  forward  and  picked  up  the  wreath.  I  ran  down 
and  tried  to  buy  it  of  her,  but  she  would  not  part  with  her  precious 
relic.  At  last  I  persuaded  her  to  sell  me  one  cypress  cone  for  a 
shilling.  The  cone  was  full  of  seed  which  I  sent  down  to  Exbury 


Summer  Holidays  89 


in  Hampshire,  at  that  time  belonging  to  my  father ;  and  there 
are  now,  in  the  wood  near  the  house,  a  number  of  quite  important 
cypress  trees,  the  beautiful  sixty-year-old  children  of  that  wreath. 
After  the  funeral,  "The  death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington" 
was  set  as  the  subject  for  a  copy  of  Alcaics  for  fifth-form  boys  at 
Eton.  It  was  an  unfortunate  subject,  for  it  was  sure  to  lead  to 
some  regrettable  absurdity  :  that  did  not  fail :  one  boy  began 
his  copy  of  verses  with  the  two  lines  : 

Ut  dixit  olim  magnus  Horatius, 
Dulce  et  decorum  est  pro  patria  mori. 

Apart  from  the  bathos  of  the  drivel,  it  was  so  inappropriate,  seeing 
that  the  glorious  old  warrior  fell  asleep  at  Walmer  full  of  years 
(eighty-three)  and  honour,  on  the  fourteenth  of  September,  1852. 
His  body  was  brought  to  London,  and  lay  in  state  at  Chelsea  for 
a  week  before  the  funeral 


CHAPTER   V 

WALES     AND      OXFORD 

I  LEFT  Eton  at  Christmas,  1854,  after  nearly  nine  years'  ex- 
perience of  its  good  and  its  evil.  The  last  half  spent  there 
was  not  a  happy  one,  though  I  was  high  up  (second,  in  fact)  in 
sixth  form,  in  the  boats,  a  member  of  Pop,  captain  of  my  house, 
and  invested  therefore  with  dignities  such  as  I  could  never  hope 
to  possess  again.  I  had  been  for  two  years  in  Dr.  Goodford's 
division,  and  during  all  that  time  I  cannot  call  to  mind  ever  having 
received  from  him  a  friendly  word,  a  kindly  look  or  a  smile  :  and 
when  I  left  and  deposited  his  fee*  with  him,  he  said,  "  Well !  I 
hope  you  may  do  better  elsewhere  than  you  have  done  here.  But  I 
doubt  it."  Not  very  gracious  or  encouraging  words  with  which 
to  send  a  boy  forth  into  the  battle  of  life.  And  yet  I  cannot  have 
been  altogether  so  bad  as  he  thought,  for  my  leave-taking  with  my 
tutor,  and  with  other  masters  who  knew  me  better  than  Goodford 
did,  was  very  different. 

But  apart  from  such  personal  matters,  the  memory  of  that  last 
half  is  a  sad  one.  We  were  at  the  beginning  of  the  Crimean  War, 
and  never  shall  I  forget  the  black  gloom  of  the  day  when  the  list 
of  killed  and  wounded  at  the  battle  of  the  Alma  was  posted  up 
at  Pote  Williams'  bookshop.  We  older  boys  came  out  of  the 
shop  blinded  with  tears  ill  repressed  for  poor  young  fellows  who 
had  been  in  the  same  division  with  us  a  few  months  before,  and 
others  a  year  or  two  our  seniors,  who  had  been  the  demi-gods  of 

*  "  Leaving  money  "  has  now  been  done  away  with.  In  my  day  a  sixth 
form  boy  on  taking  leave  of  the  Head  Master,  laid  on  his  desk  an  envelope 
containing  -£15.  For  other  boys  the  fee  was  £10.  It  was  an  ignoble  custom, 
rightly  abolished. 

90 


Wales  and  Oxford  91 

our  fourth-form  days.  Then  came  Inkerman — and  how  the  blood 
raced  boiling  through  our  veins  when  we  read  the  soul-stirring 
story  of  Balaclava — outdoing  Thermopylae.  Just  heaven !  Why 
were  we  not  there  ?  Think  of  us  boys,  almost  men,  reading 
of  the  gallant  deeds  of  Bob  Lindsay,  Gerald  Goodlake,  George 
Wombwell,  and  many  others,  men  almost  boys  !  Then  came  the 
trenches,  but  of  those  hours  the  worst  was  yet  to  come. 

From  Eton  I  went  to  Batsford,  which  I  saw  for  the  first  time, 
little  thinking  of  the  future  which  it  held  for  me  ;  and  there  I  spent 
four  happy  weeks,  being  introduced  to  shooting  and  hunting,  the 
latter  under  the  tutelage  of  old  Jem  Hills,  the  famous  hunts- 
man of  the  Heythrop,  of  which  Lord  Redesdale,  though  no  longer 
master,  was  still  the  uncrowned  king. 

At  the  end  of  the  holidays  I  was  to  go  to  Mr.  W.  E.  Jelf,  near 
Barmouth,  to  be  coached  for  a  few  months  before  going  to  Oxford. 
At  that  time  the  railway  went  no  further  than  Shrewsbury,  where 
I  lodged  at  the  sign  of  the  "  Raven,"  an  old-fashioned  country  inn 
of  great  repute — such  an  inn  as  Charles  Dickens  would  have  loved, 
and  as  he  alone  could  have  described.  As  I  sat  at  dinner  I  saw 
that  there  was  one  other  guest  in  the  coffee-room.  While  the 
waiter  was  out  of  the  room  this  gentleman  came  up  to  me  and  said, 
"  Sir,  I  beg  your  pardon  for  interrupting  you,  but  you  can  render 
me  a  great  service."  I  thought  of  Buckstone  in  "  Lend  me  Five 
Shillings,"  and  instinctively  froze,  but  I  thawed  again  when  he 
went  on  to  say,  "  I  am  Professor  Anderson,  the  Wizard  of  the  North  ; 
I  am  going  to  give  an  exhibition  of  conjuring  to-night,  and  for  two 
of  my  most  telling  tricks  I  need  an  accomplice.  Will  you  help 
me  ?  I  need  hardly  say  that  you  will  have  a  free  admission." 

I  suppose  that  he  thought  that  I  was  a  "  youth  of  an  ingenuous 
countenance  and  ingenuous  modesty,"  and  should  not  arouse 
suspicion.  I  consented,  and  he  entrusted  me  with  a  marked  coin 
and  some  other  trifle,  giving  me  full  instructions  as  to  what  I  was 
to  do.  We  adjourned  after  dinner  ;  the  room  was  crowded  and 
the  Professor  made  a  great  success  of  his  show.  And  so  it  came 
about  that  my  first  appearance  in  public  was  as  "  bonnet  "  to  the 
Wizard  of  the  North.  I  saw  no  more  of  my  friend,  for  the  next 
day  I  was  coaching  in  Pickwickian  fashion  on  the  box  seat  through 


92  Memories 

Wales  to  Dolgelly,  where  my  tutor's  carriage  met  me  and  finally 
landed  me  at  his  pretty  place,  Caerdeon,  where  he  had  bought 
himself  a  small  estate  and  built  a  charming  house. 

The  Rev.  William  Edward  Jelf  was  a  man  of  no  little  renown  in 
the  Oxford  world.  He  had  been  senior  Censor  of  Christ  Church,  a 
great  disciplinarian  both  in  college  as  tutor,  and  outside  as  proctor. 
He  was  a  very  sound  scholar,  and  the  translator  of  Raphael  Kiihner's 
Greek  Grammar,  a  monumental  work.  One  of  his  greatest  friends 
was  Scott,  the  master  of  Balliol,  to  whom  he  was  wont  to  assign 
quite  the  lion's  share  of  the  credit  for  the  great  dictionary — Liddell 
and  Scott.  As  a  Don,  Jelf  was  anything  but  popular — he  was  too 
uncompromising,  too  "  stiff  in  opinions."  At  the  same  time  he  was 
justice  itself,  and  if  you  obeyed  the  law — his  law — to  the  right  or 
to  the  left  of  which  there  was  no  salvation,  there  was  no  limit  to 
what  he  would  do  for  you.  I  had  been  warned  of  his  "  stiffness," 
and  made  up  my  mind  to  observe  discipline,  with  the  result  that  we 
got  on  famously,  and  the  months  spent  with  him  were,  if  rather 
lonely,  on  the  whole  happy  and  very  profitable,  for  he  certainly  was 
a  most  inspiring  teacher. 

All  my  work  was  done  in  my  own  room  ;  with  Mr.  Jelf  I  had  but 
one  hour  a  day,  but  then  it  was  such  an  hour  !  Sixty  minutes  not 
one  of  which  was  without  its  value.  During  the  months  that  I 
spent  with  him,  from  the  end  of  January  to  October,  I  read  through 
the  whole  of  Herodotus,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  the  Agamemnon 
of  ^Eschylus,  and,  above  all,  as  an  exercise,  the  Medea  of  Euripides, 
looking  out  every  reference  in  my  master's  great  grammar.  In 
Latin  I  read  Pliny's  delightful  letters,  was  supposed  to  be  sufficiently 
well  up  in  Horace  and  Virgil,  and  was  spared  the  arch-bore  Cicero, 
in  regard  to  whom  I  by  no  means  shared  the  enthusiasm  of  Mrs. 
Blimber  ;  as  a  matter  of  archaeology  I  might  sympathize  with  her 
as  to  the  Tusculan  villa,  but  its  owner  and  his  self-glorification  I 
should  have  avoided. 

The  curriculum  was  chosen  as  the  best  preparation  for  trying  to 
gain  the  Slade  Exhibition  at  Christ  Church.  When  I  had  been  a 
few  days  with  Jelf  and  he  had  taken  my  measure,  he  made  up  his 
mind  that  he  would  make  me  carry  that  off,  and  of  course  no  one 
knew  better  than  he  did  what  would  be  the  most  profitable  training. 


Wales  and  Oxford  93 


I  should  like,  if  it  be  not  deemed  an  impertinence,  to  say  one  word 
here  upon  the  much-vexed  question  of  a  classical  education,  and  of 
Greek  in  particular.  It  is  very  easy,  very  cheap,  to  say  that  Greek 
and  Latin  are  of  no  use  in  learning  modern  languages.  I  have  had 
some  experience  in  the  study  of  both,  and  I  am  distinctly  of  opinion 
that  nothing  has  helped  me  so  much  in  the  acquisition  of  even  the 
most  out-of-the-way  modern  languages  as  the  work  which  I  did 
under  Jelf,  dissecting  every  sentence  and  every  particle  in  the 
Medea  with  the  help  of  his  Greek  grammar. 

No  language  has  been  so  thoroughly  analysed — perhaps  because 
none  has  been  so  philosophically  constructed — as  Greek.  The  man 
who  starts  upon  the  study  of  modern  languages,  after  having  dis- 
sected, conscientiously  and  searchingly,  the  work  of  one  of  the 
Greek  giants  with  the  help  of  Jelf's  great  book,  has  insensibly 
converted  his  mind  into  a  sort  of  comparative  grammar,  he  has 
acquired  the  knowledge  of  points  of  difference  and  points  of  simi- 
larity, that  is  to  say  of  comparison,  of  which  Buffon  said,  "  nous  ne 
pouvons  acquerir  de  connaissance  que  par  la  voie  de  la  comparaison," 
and  although  the  aid  given  to  him  is,  of  course,  indirect,  it  is  none 
the  less  real.  He  is  in  the  position  of  a  man  who  goes  to  a  new 
gymnastic  exercise  with  trained  muscles,  and  therefore  with  mar- 
vellous ease,  as  compared  with  the  man  whose  muscles  and  sinews 
are  flabby  and  slack.  That  it  is  a  discipline  of  the  highest  signifi- 
cance few  will  be  found  to  deny.  When  Darwin  spent  seven  years 
in  dissecting  barnacles  it  was  not  simply  a  knowledge  of  barnacle 
nature  at  which  he  was  aiming  ;  he  was  training  his  mind  for  other 
purposes.  Apart  from  the  beauties  which  they  reveal  to  us,  and  so 
without  any  reference  to  the  important  question  of  culture,  I  am 
in  favour  of  the  study  of  the  classics,  as  a  gymnastic  exercise  of  the 
brain,  as  a  dissection  of  barnacles  which  yields  far  higher  results 
than  could  be  gained  by  merely  learning  French  and  German  with- 
out any  other  preparation.  In  that  way  a  man  would  attain  what 
must  simply  be  a  more  or  less  glorified  couriers'  knowledge,  practical 
no  doubt,  up  to  a  certain  degree,  but  unscientific  and  failing  him  at 
crucial  points. 

The  best  Oriental  scholars  whom  I  have  known  have  all  been  men 
who  attacked  their  Eastern  studies  armed  with  the  weapons 


94  Memories 

furnished  by  a  classical  education.  In  China  Sir  Harry  Parkes  was 
an  admirable  oral  interpreter.  But  he,  himself,  as  I  have  said  else- 
where, always  regretted  his  want  of  classical  training — nor  would  it 
be  possible  to  compare  him  with  that  great  scholar  Sir  Thomas 
Wade.  In  Japan  Von  Siebold  was  as  fluent  a  talker  as  could  be 
found.  He  was  the  son  of  the  famous  physician  and  naturalist, 
who  was  attached  to  the  Dutch  Mission  at  Deshima,  and  had  learnt 
Japanese  "  ambulando."  But  it  would  be  childish  to  name  him 
with  such  learned  men  as  Satow,  Aston  and  Chamberlain,  men  who 
brought  the  training  and  literature  of  the  West  to  their  studies  in 
the  East.  It  is  not  without  significance  to  note  the  great  respect 
which  such  men  were  able  to  command,  whereas  the  mere  parrot, 
however  clever,  was  held  in  little  more  esteem  than  a  head 
waiter.  Think  of  Basil  Chamberlain  appointed  to  'the  Chair  of 
ancient  Japanese  literature  in  the  University  of  Tokio. 

And  our  own  beautiful  English,  the  language  of  Chaucer,  Shake- 
speare, Milton  :  will  that  not  suffer  if  a  false  utilitarianism  should 
succeed  in  banishing  the  classics  from  our  schools  ?  Even  now  it 
is  surrounded  by  enemies,  but  I  shudder  to  think  of  what  it  might 
become  after  two  centuries  of  nothing  but  trans-oceanic  influences 
unchecked  by  scholarship. 

It  was  a  bitterly  cold  winter,  long  spoken  of  as  the  Crimean 
winter,  which  was  ushered  in  by  January,  1855.  In  Wales  as  else- 
where it  was  so  cold  that  many  birds  and  beasts  were  frozen  to  death, 
and  one  day  in  my  tutor's  garden  I  caught  a  live  woodcock  in  my 
hand.  The  poor  creature  was  at  the  last  gasp,  dying  of  starvation. 
For  many  scores  of  miles  round  there  was  no  moist  cranny  into  which 
it  could  insert  its  long  beak  for  food.  The  earth  was  like  iron. 
Death  and  misery  everywhere  in  these  islands,  and  it  was  terrible 
to  get  the  news  from  the  Crimea,  where  hundreds  of  our  poor, 
starving,  shivering  soldiers  were  in  little  better  plight  than  the 
wild  creatures  at  home.  How  they  suffered  !  and  how  nobly  patient 
they  were  ! 

During  the  dark  months  there  was  not  much  to  be  done  beyond 
taking  long,  solitary  walks  in  the  midst  of  that  glorious  scenery  ; 
Diphwys  behind  us,  the  Barmouth  river  and  Cader  Idris  in  all  its 
majesty  in  front  of  us.  Barmouth  itself  a  little  tiny  fishing  village. 


Wales  and  Oxford  95 

It  would  have  been  a  dull  time  if  Jelf  had  not  clapped  spurs  into  me 
and  filled  me  with  a  new-born  ambition,  and  a  certain  measure  of 
that  belief  in  myself  without  which  there  is  no  hope.  And  I  did 
work!  When  the  spring  came  it  brought  with  it  an  invitation  to 
Jelf  to  act  as  examiner  in  the  final  schools  at  Oxford.  He  was  very 
anxious  to  accept  this,  for  he  loved  keeping  up  the  connection  with 
his  old  university,  so  he  proposed  to  me  that  I  should  finish  up  the 
last  two  or  three  weeks  with  him  at  Christ  Church,  where  his 
brother,  the  principal  of  King's  College,  who  was  a  Canon,  had  lent 
him  his  house.  My  father  raised  no  objection,  and  I,  of  course,  was 
delighted,  for  I  knew  that  among  the  undergraduates  I  should  find 
many  old  friends.  I  am  grateful  for  the  memory  of  those  days, 
for  never  again  in  after  years  did  Oxford  exercise  upon  me  the  same 
fascination  that  it  possessed  at  that  time ;  I  was  very  young,  and 
very  impressionable.  Indeed  in  a  way  it  seemed  as  if  I  then 
was  under  an  influence  which,  when  I  came  back  some  months 
later,  had  died  away. 

At  my  first  visit  there  was  still  an  old-world  atmosphere  about 
the  place,  something  which  had  preserved  a  sort  of  elusive  aroma  of 
the  cloister  and  the  monk.  It  was  the  Oxford  of  the  great  men  who 
from  days  immemorial  had  made  it  famous  ;  in  modern  tunes  of 
"  that  devout  spirit,"  Pusey,  Newman,  and  "  the  movement."  It 
was  instinct  with  the  music  of  Keble.  But  to  me  at  that  particular 
moment  it  was  the  Oxford  of  Gaisford.  The  great  Dean  died  a  few 
weeks  later,  Liddell  became  Dean,  and  Oxford  came  under  the 
gentle  sceptre  of  a  bevy  of  ladies,  two  of  them  very  beautiful,  very 
smart,  and  not  a  bit  monachal.  Moreover,  it  soon  ceased  to  be  a 
place  of  learning  for  English  gentlemen  of  the  reformed  Christian 
faith.  In  1855  the  Parthian,  the  Mede,  the  Elamite,  the  dweller 
in  Mesopotamia,  had  no  place  in  the  sacred  cloisters.  We  were 
all  called  upon  to  subscribe  to  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  ("  forty,  if 
you  wish  it,  sir,"  was  the  pert  answer  of  a  famous  wit),  and  as  for 
the  various  fellowships  and  scholarships,  they  remained  as  they 
had  been  instituted  by  the  pious  founders.  All  Souls  was  a  link 
between  the  university  and  the  great  world.  The  qualifications 
for  a  fellowship  there  were  that  the  candidate  should  be  "  bene 
natus,  bene  vestitus  et  modice  doctus  in  arte  canendi."  It  was 


96  Memories 

irreverently  said  that  those  last  three  words  had  long  since  been 
omitted.  The  legend  ran  that  before  the  election  the  candidates, 
duly  qualified  as  founder's  kin,  were  invited  to  dine  in  Hall :  a 
cherry  tart  was  served,  and  the  supreme  test  upon  which  election 
depended  was  the  way  in  which  the  aspirant  disposed  of  the  stones. 

In  those  happy  days  a  fellowship  of  All  Souls  possessed  the  same 
quality  which  Lord  Melbourne  admired  so  much  in  the  Order  of 
the  Garter,  "  There  was  no  damned  nonsense  of  merit  about  it." 
Now,  alas  !  all  is  changed.  The  fellows  of  colleges,  even  of  All 
Souls,  are  married  and  meritorious.  The  Don's  wife  is  the  ruling 
power  and  his  daughters  are  the  nymphs  of  Isis,  floating  luxuriously 
in  punts  under  the  willows  of  the  backwaters — punts  that  the 
ruthless  proctors  of  my  day,  suspiciously  tolerant  of  sisters,  would 
have  employed  mine-sweepers  to  disperse.  Oxford  has  suffered 
a  sea-change.  All  the  tongues  of  the  diaspora  of  Babel  raise  a 
cacophony  in  the  groves  of  the  Academeia.  The  Mohammedan 
in  pious  prayer  turns  his  face  to  the  Kibleh  and  curses  the  infidel. 
The  Buddhist  reverently  seeks  Nirvana  in  the  contemplation  of  his 
own  navel.  The  mild  Hindoo  profitably  studies  anarchy.  The 
Negro  becomes  a  Christian  and  takes  holy  orders  that  he  may 
go  back  to  his  own  country,  receive  a  revelation,  and  organize  a 
massacre  of  whites  by  Divine  command.  Such  are  the  uses  to 
which  the  grand  old  universities  of  England  and  America  are  now 
put,  and  this  is  what  is  called  reform.  The  Oxford  of  Gaisford, 
the  Cambridge  of  Whewell  are  phantoms  of  the  past ;  what  were 
once  the  strong  places  of  Christianity  are  now  held  by  the  heathen, 
and  England  is  no  longer  for  the  English — no — not  even  the  House 
of  Commons. 

Dean  Gaisford  was  a  great  potentate :  not  only  was  his  scholar- 
ship superb,  but  he  was  also  a  ruler  of  men.  When  he  nodded, 
Olympus  trembled.  When  he  stood  up  at  the  altar  in  Christ 
Church  and  thundered  out  the  first  Commandment,  with  a  long 
pause  after  the  "  I  "  and  a  strong  insistence  on  the  "  Me,"  he  would 
look  round  the  cathedral  sternly,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  I  should  like 
to  see  the  undergraduate,  or  the  graduate  either,  for  that  matter, 
who  will  dare  to  dispute  that  proposition."  His  famous  utterance 
in  a  sermon,  "  St.  Paul  says,  and  I  partly  agree  with  him,"  has 


Wales  and  Oxford.  97 

become  a  classic.  But  he  was  like  the  Nasmyth  Hammer  :  he  could 
crush  a  rock  or  flatten  out  a  rose-leaf.  Jelf  had  a  good  story  of  the 
way  in  which  he  once  petrified  a  very  young  Don  who  at  one  of  his 
dinners  ate  an  apple  in  a  way  which  he  did  not  consider  to  be  quite 
orthodox. 

Not  unnaturally  I  felt  no  little  trepidation  when  on  presenting 
myself  for  the  viva  voce  examination  for  the  Slade  Exhibition,  I 
saw  the  dreaded  Dean  in  the  Chair.  To  my  relief  the  Iliad  was  the 
book  chosen,  and  I  was  put  on  to  construe.  Then  came  a  few  ques- 
tions on  Homeric  matters,  in  which  Jelf,  during  long  months,  had 
primed  me  well ;  and  as  I  left  the  room,  great  was  my  joy  to  hear 
the  terrible  Dean  growl  out,  "  That  young  man  knows  his  Homer 
well."  Never  shall  I  forget  the  welcome  which  Jelf  gave  me  when 
it  was  announced  that  I  had  won.  Perhaps  not  a  little  both  of  his 
pleasure  and  mine  consisted  in  thinking  how  annoyed  Goodford 
would  be,  for  Jelf  always  held  that  Goodford  had  been  unfair 
to  me.  It  was  something  of  a  schaden-freude. 

So  I  was  matriculated  by  Dean  Gaisford,  went  to  Switzerland 
with  my  father  for  a  month,  and  then  back  to  Caerdeon  for  a  final 
polish  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Jelf  before  Oxford. 

When  I  entered  Christ  Church  in  the  following  October  (1855) 
there  were  at  any  rate  three  memorable  personages  amongst  the 
Dons.  Dr.  Pusey  was  a  venerable  figure — venerable  not  on  account 
of  his  age,  for  he  was  but  fifty-five,  and  had  nearly  thirty  more  years . 
ahead  of  him,  but  as  the  hero  of  many  fights,  the  victim  of  fierce 
persecutions^  the  man  who,  had  he  lived  two  or  three  centuries 
earlier,  would  have  been  burnt  alive  ;  some  of  his  opponents  must 
have  regretted  the  disabilities  imposed  by  the  nineteenth  century, 
but  he  himself  would  have  faced  the  stake  with  all  the  courage  of 
an  inspired  martyr.  As  he  shuffled  along  the  great  quadrangle, 
by  no  means  a  stately  figure,  looking  older,  far  older,  than  his  years, 
there  would  be  few  men,  whatever  their  opinions  might  be  as  to  the 
religious  controversy  of  which  he  was  the  figurehead,  who  would 
not  take  off  their  caps  out  of  respect  for  his  goodness,  his  piety,  his 
heroism  and  his  great  learning.  He  was  not  only  profoundly  versed 
in  all  the  subtleties  of  the  old  Fathers,  but  at  Gottingen,  whither  the 
necessities  of  theological  study  had  driven  him,  he  plunged  with 
VOL.  i  7 


98  Memories 

heart  and  soul  into  the  dark  depths  of  German  priestcraft  and  anti- 
priestcraft,  and  into  the  mysteries  of  Syriac,  Hebrew  and  Arabic 
scholarship. 

To  me  there  was  always  a  magic  halo  about  the  learning  of  the 
East,  and  so,  although  I  never  had  speech  of  the  great  Divine,  never 
even  had  the  very  real  honour  of  being  introduced  to  him,  I  looked 
upon  him  with  no  little  awe  as  one  removed  far  above  the  level  of 
ordinary  men.  The  other  canons  and  professors  were  no  doubt 
worthy  men  and  learned — perhaps  even  an  honour  to  their  cloth  ; 
but  the  famous  professor  of  Hebrew  was  Somebody.  I  felt,  as 
Napoleon  said  of  Goethe,  "  there  is  a  Man." 

The  senior  Censor  of  Christ  Church  was  Osborne  Gordon,  a 
brilliant  character  whom  to  have  known  was  indeed  a  privilege, 
and  as  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  his  pupil  and  he  was  very  kind 
to  me,  he  has  remained  one  of  the  pleasantest  memories  of  my 
university  days.  He  was  a  finished  scholar,  very  witty,  with  a  great 
appreciation  of  character.  He  would  say  the  drollest  things  with 
the  most  imperturbable  gravity,  being  in  his  way  a  man  of  the 
world,  in  spite  of  the  cramping  tendencies  of  the  Oxford  common 
room.  When  Lord  Lisburne  took  his  son,  my  contemporary,  to 
Christ  Church,  he  consulted  Mr.  Gordon  as  to  what  allowance  he 
should  give  him  as  a  Tuft.  "  Well,  Lord  Lisburne,"  answered  the 
witty  Don,  cocking  his  trencher  cap  on  one  side  as  was  his  wont 
when  he  was  going  to  say  something  very  funny,  "  you  can  give  your 
son  any  allowance  you  like,  but  please  remember  that  his  debts 
will  always  be  in  proportion  to  his  allowance  " — a  most  sagacious 
remark  !  On  another  occasion,  a  certain  young  gentleman  went  to 
him  and  asked  him  whether  he  had  any  chance  of  passing  his  little-go. 
"  Well !  you  have  one  great  advantage,"  was  the  answer.  "  You 
will  go  into  the  examination  absolutely  unhampered  by  facts." 

During  the  time  that  I  was  at  Oxford,  Charles  Spurgeon  was 
making  a  new  sensation  as  a  preacher.  One  Sunday  Osborne 
Gordon  and  two  or  three  Oxford  Dons  went  up  to  London  to  hear 
him.  The  next  evening  my  tutor  came,  as  he  often  did,  to  smoke 
a  pipe  in  my  rooms.  I  asked  him  what  had  been  the  impression 
made  by  Spurgeon  on  him  and  his  friends.  They  had  been  struck 
by  Spurgeon's  power,  but  had  been  greatly  shocked  when  the 


Wales  and  Oxford  99 

preacher,  after  laying  down  a  rule  of  life,  went  on  to  say  :  "If 
you  do  as  I  have  told  you  to  do,  and  if  after  that  Jesus  Christ  should 
at  your  death  refuse  you  admittance  to  heaven,  you  tell  Hun  that 
Charles  Spurgeon  says  He  is  a  very  shabby  fellow !  "  Surely, 
contempt  of  all  convention  and  the  familiar  degradation  of  the  most 
sacred  Name  could  hardly  go  further.  Throw  propriety  to  the 
winds,  and  it  is  an  easy  matter  to  make  a  startling  speech  or  preach 
an  arresting  sermon.  To  Gordon's  cultivated  and  fastidious  mind 
such  levity  and  vulgarizing  of  the  sublime  could  only  be  repellent. 

Osborne  Gordon  was  afterwards,  in  1860,  appointed  Vicar  of  East 
Hampstead,  where  he  was  as  much  beloved  by  Lord  and  Lady 
Downshire  and  his  other  parishioners  as  he  had  been  at  Oxford. 
Who  that  really  knew  him  could  help  loving  him  ?  He  died  in 
1883.  Ruskin  wrote  his  epitaph — rather  a  stilted  Johnsonian 
attempt. 

The  third  great  treasure,  unsuspected  by  us,  that  we  possessed  at 
Christ  Church,  was  our  mathematical  lecturer,  Charles  Lutwidge 
Dodgson.  Who  could  have  guessed  that  the  dry  little  man  from 
whom  we  learnt  the  sublime  truth  that  things  which  are  equal  to 
one  another  are  equal  to  themselves,  was  hatching  in  that  fertile 
brain  of  his  such  a  miracle  of  fancy  and  fun  as  "  Alice's  Adventures 
in  Wonderland  "  ?  The  book  came  out  whilst  I  was  in  the  Far 
East,  out  of  the  way  of  all  literary  gossip,  and  I  was  stricken  with 
amazement  when  I  came  home  and  the  identity  of  Lewis  Carrol  was 
revealed  to  me. 

A  good  story  was  told  about  him  which  I  have  not  seen  in  print. 
Queen  Victoria,  it  seems,  was  so  much  struck  by  "  Alice  "  that 
she  commanded  Sir  Henry  Ponsonby  to  write  and  compliment 
the  author,  adding  that  she  would  be  pleased  to  receive  any  other 
book  of  his.  He  was  greatly  flattered  and  sent  her  his  "  Syllabus 
of  Plane  Algebraical  Geometry." 

All  the  tutors  were  good  and  amiable  men.  But  there  was 
one  in  memory  of  whom  I  would  fain  burn  my  candle,  though  it 
be  but  a  tallow-dip,  and  that  was  St.  John  Tyrwhitt,  a  most 
dear  and  charming  man,  a  person  of  great  culture,  an  artist  in  his 
leisure  hours,  the  friend  and  disciple  of  Ruskin.  He  would  often 
invite  me  to  his  rooms  and  talk  with  fervent  admiration  of  his 
VOL.  i  7* 


loo  Memories. 

illustrious  friend,  infecting  me  with  the  first  germs  of  enthusiasm 
for  his  works.  Always  kind,  always  sympathetic,  ready  at  all 
times  to  give  good  advice,  a  trusty  friend  in  need,  without  a  half- 
penny's worth  of  donnishness  about  him,  St.  John  Tyrwhitt,  what- 
ever his  scholarship  may  have  been,  as  to  which  I  know  nothing, 
was  a  valuable  asset  in  a  flock  of  young  men.  Dean  Liddell,  who 
succeeded  Dean  Gaisford,  was  a  singularly  handsome  man,  and 
a  great  figurehead.  But  he  was  not  popular.  The  undergraduates 
resented  his  treatment  of  them  as  schoolboys  ;  he  could  not  quite 
shake  off  the  schoolmaster  attitude  of  his  Westminster  days,  and 
this  led  to  some  deplorable  follies,  and  worse  than  follies.  Rebel- 
lion was  rife,  the  lecture  room  was  gutted,  and  the  furniture 
destroyed  ;  a  kettle  of  gunpowder  with  a  fuse  attached  to  it  was 
hung  upon  the  door  of  the  deanery,  but  was  fortunately  discovered 
in  time.  A  subscription  was  got  up  to  pay  for  the  damage  that 
had  been  done,  and  the  malefactors  were  rusticated.  For  the 
first  year  the  condition  of  things  was  deplorable — after  that  they 
mended.  But  the  Dean,  in  spite  of  his  wife's  judicious  help,  never 
in  my  time  commanded  the  sympathy  of  "  the  House." 

The  drawing  together  of  the  threads  of  memories  much  more 
than  half  a  century  old  is  but  dismal  work.  It  is  like  walking 
through  a  cemetery  filled  with  tombstones  all  inscribed  with 
names  that  in  spite  of  time  are  still  familiar,  and  some  of  them 
very  dear.  This  has  probably  been  said  before — it  is  so  evident. 
Of  the  Dons  of  1855  not  one  remains.  Bayne,  who  died  a  few 
years  ago,  was  the  last.  Even  of  my  own  contemporaries  few, 
only  here  and  there  one,  are  left.  The  bright  curly  heads,  fair 
or  dark,  with  whose  owners  we  lived,  and  laughed,  and  hoped  and 
quarrelled,  have  all  been  laid  low,  and  if  one  remains  above  ground, 
it  is  as  bald  as  a  billiard  ball,  or  perhaps  nourishes  a  few  straggling 
lifeless  hairs,  white  as  old  age  can  bleach  them.  Few  became 
eminent  :  among  them  were  Lord  St.  Aldwyn  (Sir  Michael  Hicks- 
Beach),  facile  princeps — Alfred  Thesiger,  raised  to  be  a  Lord 
Justice  of  Appeal,  but  who  did  not  live  long  to  enjoy  his  fame 
— Roland  Williams,  also  Lord  Justice,  himself  the  son  of  a  judge 
(if  I  only  knew  how  to  apply  "  matre  pulchra  filia  pulchrior  "  to  a 
legal  reputation  !)  one  of  the  most  delightful  room-neighbours — 


Wales  and  Oxford.  101 


were  men  who  made  their  mark  in  the  world — outside  of  Christ  Church 
were  Swinburne,  and,  a  little  older,  Lord  Justice  Bowen,  prince  of 
lawyers  and  wits — Tom  Brassey  at  University,  and  above  all, 
John  Morley  at  Exeter.  The  latter  I  did  not  know  until  a  dozen 
or  so  years  later,  when  he  was  already  a  power  in  Letters,  a  man 
for  whom,  differing  with  him  as  I  always  have  done  toto  ccelo  in 
politics,  I  entertain  the  greatest  respect  mingled  with  an  affec- 
tionate gratitude  for  giving  me  my  first  encouragement  as  a  writer 
in  1871. 

The  rest  of  us  were  just  mediocrities  :  tolerable  specimens  of 
healthy  young  Englishmen  ready  to  do  our  duty  as  landowners, 
soldiers,  lawyers,  clergymen,  civil  servants ;  in  general,  fairly 
respectable,  in  some  cases  woeful  scamps.  On  one  point  we  were 
most  of  us  agreed,  at  any  rate  in  practice,  and  that  was  that  it 
was  expedient  that  we  should  go  through  the  University  doing 
as  little  work  and  spending  as  much  money  as  possible.  That 
was  the  way  in  which  we  interpreted  our  duty  to  our  parents. 
And  so  I  spent  the  first  two  years  of  my  life  at  Oxford  in  forgetting 
with  the  utmost  facility  the  small  modicum  of  scholarship  that 
with  the  utmost  difficulty  I  had  acquired  under  Jelf.  A  piteous 
and  a  shameful  record. 

We  had  the  usual  number  of  Tufts — some  of  whom  achieved 
notoriety  in  after  life  :  Lord  Coventry  early  made  a  name  for 
himself  as  a  great  agriculturist  and  model  landlord,  a  mighty 
hunter  before  the  Lord,  M.F.H.  and  Master  of  the  Buckhounds, 
a  most  conscientious  and  hardworking  Lord  Lieutenant  of  his 
county,  and  I  suppose  one  of  the  best  living  judges  of  horses  and 
racing  ;  a  man  who  has  always  been  idolized  by  his  friends.  Then 
there  was  Skelmersdale,  a  really  resplendent  youth  in  all  the  first 
glory  of  a  beard  which  was  to  become  the  joy  of  Courts  and  the 
title  to  an  Earldom.  He  was  as  handsome  as  he  was  good  and 
generous,  the  highest  type  of  honest  Anglo-Saxon  beauty,  after 
whom  the  Donnesses  ran,  worshipping,  "  en  tout  bien  tout 
honneur,"  as  if  he  had  been  in  deed,  and  not  in  appearance  only, 
the  archangel  Gabriel. 

Of  the  undergraduates  at  Christ  Church  who  were  a  little  older 
than  me,  none  was  more  brilliant,  socially,  than  John  Arkwright 


102  Memories 

of  Hampton  Court,  near  Hereford  ;  he  was  so  gay,  so  full  of  fun, 
and  so  "  good  all  round,"  that  he  was  always  the  central  figure 
wherever  he  might  be.  The  other  day  I  was  reading  over  again 
the  copy  of  verses  which  he  wrote  as  a  "  Vale  "  when  he  left 
Eton  ;  the  satire,  always  good-natured,  of  the  different  masters 
of  that  day  was  really  a  masterpiece  of  wit.  Of  course,  all  the 
delicate  humour  of  it  would  be  unintelligible  to  the  present 
generation— its  value  depended  on  knowing  the  now  long-for- 
gotten shades  that  then  were  men — but  as  the  work  of  a  boy  of 
seventeen  or  eighteen  it  was  wonderful. 

One  fifth  of  November,  when  there  was  a  town  and  gown  row, 
about  forty  of  us  went  out  from  Christ  Church  to  see  the  fun. 
Hardly  had  we  all  got  into  St.  Aldate's  Street  when  we  met  the 
senior  Proctor,  with  Brown  the  marshal  carrying  the  mace,  the 
bull  dogs  and  all  the  myrmidons  of  collegiate  authority.  Of 
course,  he  stopped  us — "  Your  name  and  College,  gentlemen  !  " 
We  were  promptly  sent  back  into  Tom  Gate,  and  as  promptly 
marched  across  the  quadrangle  and  were  out  again  at  Canterbury 
Gate,  Arkwright  and  myself  still  leading.  This  time  we  got  as 
far  as  the  High  Street  unmolested,  but  no  sooner  had  we  turned 
the  corner  by  Spiers'  shop  than  we  ran  into  the  arms  of  another 
Proctor.  "  Your  names,  gentlemen ;  go  back  to  College  at  once  !  " 
and  forming  up  behind  us  with  his  lictors,  the  great  guardian  of 
morals  drove  us  in  front  of  him  along  the  High  Street  and  by  St. 
Aldate's  to  Tom  Gate.  We  had  not  gone  many  yards  when  we 
met  Proctor  No.  i,  who  mercifully  did  not  recognize  us.  "  Your 
names  and  Colleges,  gentlemen."  "  Thank  you,  sir,"  said  John 
Arkwright  with  inimitable  coolness,  pointing  to  the  police  force 
behind,  "  We  have  our  Escort !  "  There  was  a  great  laugh  from 
the  crowd  that  had  collected,  and  I  expected  consequences,  but 
the  Proctor  must  have  been  a  good-natured  fellow  who  saw  the 
joke  of  the  thing,  for  he  took  off  his  cap  and  disappeared,  and 
we  heard  no  more  of  the  matter — but  all  chance  of  fun  or  a  fight 
was  over  for  that  night,  and  this  time  we  stayed  within  gates. 
John  Arkwright,  among  other  accomplishments,  was  a  capital 
boxer — and  we  used  to  have  great  bouts  at  Maclaren's  gymnasium 
and  fencing-rooms 


Wales  and  Oxford  103 


Indeed  there  was  quite  a  little  fashion- wave  of  sparring  which 
came  over  Oxford  about  the  years  1856  and  1857,  and  so  we  got 
Aaron  Jones  to  come  down  and  give  us  lessons.  He  arrived  the 
week  after  his  second  fight  with  Tom  Sayers,  and  at  that  time, 
though  by  no  means  an  ill-looking  man,  he  was  not  a  pretty  sight. 
All  shape,  all  humanity  seemed  to  have  been  beaten  out  of  his 
face  ;  he  must  have  suffered  horribly,  but  that  he  did  not  mind. 
His  courage  was  extraordinary  and  he  was  an  undeniably  fine 
boxer  ;  but  he  had  one  great  defect  which  was  fatal  to  a  first- 
class  fighter  in  those  days  ;  his  hands  used  to  swell  and  get  puffy, 
and  the  striking  value  of  his  blows  was  largely  discounted.  Now 
that  gloves  are  used  in  all  fights  he  would  have  been  a  most  for- 
midable adversary,  for  his  power  of  inflicting  punishment  would 
have  been  as  great  as  his  endurance  in  taking  it.  He  was  a  good 
specimen  of  his  class,  and  he  had  a  certain  rough  and  ready  wit 
which  made  him  very  amusing. 

One  day  several  of  us  had  been  sparring  in  my  rooms,  and  we 
left  off  just  when  it  was  too  late  to  go  for  a  walk  and  a  little  too 
early  to  get  ready  for  dinner  ;  so  we  walked  across  to  Tom  Gate 
and  stood  there  smoking  and  watching  the  passers-by.  As  we 
were  talking,  there  came  along  a  very  pretty  girl,  very  smartly 
dressed,  under  full  sail  (and  it  was  full  sail  in  those  crinoline  days, 
of  which  John  Leech  was  the  recorder).  Somebody  said,  "  Oh  ! 
look — what  a  pretty  girl !  "  "  Ah  !  "  said  Aaron,  "  I  don't  think 
much  of  her.  Why  just  look  at  her  feet  !  She'd  frighten  a  worm 
in  a  half-acre  field  into  fits  if  he  saw  her  coming  in  at  the  further 
end  of  it." 

Talking  of  boxing,  it  appears  to  me  that  the  difference  between 
the  fighting  of  the  days  of  which  I  am  writing  and  the  fighting 
of  to-day  is  more  than  a  question  of  gloves  or  no  gloves.  The 
gloves  may  save  a  certain  amount  of  disfigurement  which  was 
caused  by  the  cutting  of  knuckles  ;  but  as  a  guarantee  against 
risk  to  life  they  are  useless.  On  the  other  hand,  the  theory  of 
the  modern  school  of  boxing  points  to  far  more  real  danger  than 
was  run  by  the  prize-fighters  of  my  day,  such  men  as  Ben  Caunt, 
Bendigo,  Nat  Langham,  Tom  Sayers,  Bob  Travers  and  a  host  of 
other  famous  pugilists. 


104  Memories. 

They  continued  the  traditions  of  Tom  Spring,  Cribb,  Jackson, 
Molyneux,  the  men  of  the  Georgian  days.  Hitting  was  straight 
from  the  shoulder ;  "  hooks  "  were  practically  unknown,  and 
the  sickening  body  blows  rare  indeed  ;  the  face  was  the  target, 
and  the  infliction  of  black  eyes  and  a  bloody  nose  represented  the 
punishment  which  it  was  sought  to  inflict ;  in  the  great  fight 
between  Tom  Sayers  and  Heenan,  of  which  I  shall  hope  to  write 
later  on,  I  cannot  call  to  mind  the  delivery  of  a  single  body  blow, 
certainly  there  was  not  one  that  had  any  significance  ;  in  teaching, 
the  first-rate  masters  of  the  art,  Nat  Langham,  Hoiles  (the  Spider), 
young  Reed,  used  to  make  their  pupils  defend  the  body  by  the 
position  in  which  the  right  arm  was  carried,  but  the  attack  was 
always  directed  at  the  head — mainly  at  the  eyes. 

In  the  old  straight  fights,  therefore,  there  was  unquestionably 
much  ugly  mauling,  but  probably  less  danger  than  exists  in  these 
days  of  gloves,  and  hooks  on  the  jaw,  and  deadly  punches  over 
the  heart  and  vital  organs. 

In  the  Christmas  and  Easter  vacations,  the  haunts  of  "  the 
Fancy,"  as  they  were  called  (a  name  more  fitting  to  beautiful 
ladies  than  to  prize-fighters),  in  the  neighbourhood  of  St.  Martin's 
Lane,  were  very  attractive  to  a  young  undergraduate  who  felt 
himself  big  and  proud  when  he  was  greeted  by  and  had  shaken 
hands  with  such  celebrities  as  I  have  mentioned  above.  There, 
too,  he  would  meet  many  of  the  well-known  patrons  of  the  ring — 
Napier  Sturt,  Billy  and  Folly  Duff  and  others.  Billy  was  a  great 
character  of  whom  many  a  queer  story  was  told.  Rat-killing, 
badger-drawing  and  other  kindred  sports  brought  him  into  con- 
tact with  all  the  dog-dealers  or  dog-stealers,  for  I  fancy  that  in 
London  the  two  trades  were  often  interchanged  in  those  days  ; 
perhaps  they  are  still. 

A  lady  whom  he  knew  lost  a  pet  dog  and  was  miserable,  so 
she  wrote  and  complained  piteously  to  Billy  Duff,  who  said  he 
would  try  and  get  it  back  for  her.  Off  he  went  to  the  house  of 
a  famous  dog-dealer,  and  was  told  that  he  was  not  at  home.  Billy 
asked  to  see  the  wife — oh  !  yes,  the  wife  was  at  home,  but  she 
had  had  a  baby  a  few  days  since  and  was  in  bed.  Billy  said  that 
did  not  signify  ;  he  would  just  go  upstairs  and  see  her  for  a 


Wales  and  Oxford.  105 

moment  as  he  had  something  important  to  tell  her.  So  up  he 
went  and  found  Mrs.  L — ,  who  on  hearing  the  case,  swore  by  all 
her  gods  that  her  husband  knew  nothing  about  it.  Something 
in  the  good  woman's  too  positive  manner  aroused  Billy's  sus- 
picion, so  he  took  the  baby  out  of  its  cradle  and  told  her  that  he 
was  going  to  carry  it  off  and  (he  stammered  badly),  "  as  soon  as 
his  friend  got  her  d-d-d-dog  back  he  would  return  the  b-b-b-aby." 
Downstairs  he  went  with  the  baby,  and  in  two  hours  the  bereaved 
lady  was  shedding  tears  of  joy  over  her  dog. 

An  escapade  of  Billy  Duff's  at  Baden  might  have  ended  in  a 
tragedy.  It  was  in  the  old  days  of  the  gaming  tables  when  the 
most  heterogeneous  polyglot  crowd,  not  altogether  composed  of 
angels,  used  to  be  gathered  together  in  that  earthly  paradise. 
Dining  at  the  table  d'hote,  Billy  found  himself  sitting  next  to  a 
portentous  personage  wearing  upon  his  thumb  a  huge  red  Cornelian 
ring  graven  with  a  coronet  and  a  coat  of  arms  of  many  quarter- 
ings.  It  was  summer,  and  there  were  green  peas,  which  the  per- 
sonage proceeded  to  shovel  into  his  mouth  with  his  knife.  This 
offended  Bill}'',  who,  with  sublime  impertinence,  desired  him  not 
to  repeat  the  offence.  The  Baron  or  Count,  or  whatever  he  was, 
stared  furiously  and  went  on  pea-shovelling  as  before.  "  I  have 
spoken  to  you  once,"  stammered  Billy.  "  D-d-d-don't  let  me 
have  to  speak  again."  This,  of  course,  only  made  the  heraldic 
personage  more  angry.  So  Billy  watched  his  opportunity  and 
nudged  his  neighbour's  elbow,  nearly  driving  the  knife  through 
his  cheek.  Of  course  there  was  a  hideous  row  and  a  duel  the  next 
day,  when  Billy  broke  his  adversary's  arm.  "  I  did  not  want  to 
hurt  the  poor  d-d-d-devil  much,"  said  Billy  when  he  told  the  story. 
Long  years  afterwards  I  was  talking  to  the  head  of  his  clan  about 
him.  To  my  amazement  he  had  never  even  heard  of  him.  Such 
is  fame  ! 

It  would  have  been  better  for  me  if  I  had  devoted  a  little  less 
attention  to  the  Fancy  and  their  Corinthian  friends,  the  Toms  and 
Jerrys  of  the  fifties,  and  had  shown  a  little  more  respect  for  the 
purposes  of  the  University.  There  was  a  moment  when  Modera- 
tions, then  a  modern  innovation,  came  in  sight,  and  I  had  to  cram 
into  something  like  six  weeks  work  which  would  have  been  mastered 


io6  Memories 

easily  enough  with  a  very  small  amount  of  work  spread  over  two 
years.  Osborne  Gordon  was  kindness  itself — he  took  me  in  hand 
and  made  me  read  Pindar  with  him,  thinking  that  if  he  could 
but  cram  that  into  me,  it  would  cover  a  multitude  of  sins. 

The  fatal  day  arrived.  I  did  well  enough  until  I  came  to 
Demosthenes  ;  I  had  only  read  six  orations  out  of  eight,  and  as 
ill-luck  would  have  it,  two  out  of  the  three  pieces  set  happened 
to  be  taken  out  of  the  unread  speeches.  Then  came  the  viva  voce 
— I  was  taken  on  in  Pindar,  and  Osborne  Gordon,  who  had  come 
to  listen,  was  delighted  when  at  the  end  the  examiners  stood  up 
and  took  off  their  caps,  usually  a  sign  that  the  victim  who  has 
been  upon  the  rack  has  got  a  first-class.  My  dear  tutor  met  me 
outside  and  said  all  sorts  of  pretty  things.  But  when  the  lists 
came  out  there  was  I,  a  dismal  second-class,  beaten  by  two  or 
three  rivals  whom  I  had  floored  over  and  over  again  in  other 
examinations.  When  Osborne  Gordon,  furious,  asked  the  reason 
why,  the  Examiners  said  that  it  was  impossible  to  give  a  first 
to  a  young  man  who  had  evidently  not  read  his  books.  Demos- 
thenes had  done  me  !  How  I  cursed  him  and  his  pebble  and  the 
roaring  sea- waves,  and  /Eschines  and  the  avSpt^  etKaorat*  and  all 
the  rabble  of  them  ! 

Not  long  afterwards  I  received  a  nomination  for  the  Foreign 
Office  and  was  delighted  to  say  farewell  to  the  University.  I  was 
disgusted  with  Oxford,  when  I  ought  to  have  been  disgusted  with 
myself.  But  it  was  better  that  I  should  go.  Amidst  the  old 
surroundings  it  would  have  been  difficult,  perhaps  impossible  for 
me  to  break  with  the  old  habits,  the  old  loafing,  and  for  an  under- 
graduate there  is  nothing  so  dangerous,  nothing  so  demoralizing 
as  loafing.  In  that  respect  I  believe  that  the  University  can  claim 
a  change  for  the  better. 

In  my  day,  unless  a  youngster  played  cricket  or  rowed  in  the 
summer,  unless  he  hunted  or  went  out  riding  in  the  winter,  there 
was  little  for  him  to  do  except  dawdle  about  the  High  Street,  or 
play  billiards,  or  rackets,  or  tennis,  and  for  these  latter  games  there 
was  but  small  provision.  There  was  no  hockey,  and  practically  no 
football :  I  believe  that  there  were  a  few  young  men  who  kicked 

diicaffrai  =  jurymen 


Wales  and  Oxford  107 


about  a  ball  in  remote  pastures,  but  the  game  was  looked  upon  as  a 
degradation  and  the  players  as  eccentricities.  There  were  no 
"  blues  "  except  for  the  eleven,  and  the  eight. 

I  quite  sympathize  with  those  who  think  that  too  much  attention 
is  now  given  to  games  ;  still,  when  I  go  to  Oxford  and  see  the 
hundreds  of  lads  flocking  out,  half  naked,  to  football,  hockey,  running 
and  jumping,  I  cannot  help  admitting  that  they  are  leading  cleaner, 
wholesomer  lives  than  we  did,  when  we  sauntered  between  Carfax 
and  Magdalen  Bridge,  parading  the  last  unpaid  masterpiece  of  some 
London  tailor. 

I  am  reminded  of  one  of  Gavarni's  old  caricatures.  A  poor, 
shabby  student  in  the  Quartier  Latin  is  watching  another  trying  on 
a  very  glorious  new  coat.  "  Combien  $a  te  coute-t-il  un  habit 
comme  cela  ?  "  "  Je  ne  sais  pas."  "  Dieu  veuille,  mon  cher, 
que  tu  ne  le  saches  jamais  !  "  Sooner  or  later  the  bill  has  to  be 
paid,  whether  for  loafing  or  for  coats,  and  the  bill  for  loafing  is  the 
heavier  of  the  two. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   F.    O. 

Je  suis  copiste, 
Aflfreux  metier ! 
Joyeux  ou  triste, 
Tou jours  copier  1 

NO  one  knew  who  was  the  unhappy  clerk  who,  in  a  pessimistic 
mood,  wrote  those  Dantesque  lines  with  a  diamond  on  a 
pane  of  glass  in  the  old  Foreign  Office  in  Downing  Street.  If  I 
had  been  in  England  when  the  old  house  was  broken  up,  I  should 
have  tried  to  buy  that  window-pane,  with  its  inscription — a  note 
of  despair  recalling  the  "  Lasciate  ogni  speranza,  voi  ch'  intrate." 

The  old  Foreign  Office  in  Downing  Street  was  a  dingy  building 
enough,  with  a  sort  of  crusted,  charwomanly  look  about  it,  suggestive 
of  anything  but  Secretaries  of  State,  ambassadors,  and  such-like 
sublimities.  The  Dii  mafores  occupied  tapestried*  chambers  facing 
the  Park,  but  the  great  mass  of  the  rooms  in  which  the  clerks 
worked  looked  out  upon  nothing  but  Downing  Street  on  one  side, 
and  on  the  other  a  rookery  so  richly  caked  with  soot  and  dirt  that 
the  very  windows  must  long  since  have  ceased  to  let  in  a  ray  of 
light — a  nest  of  squalid  slums  that  have  long  since  been  improved  off 
the  face  of  London.  One  house  there  was  among  those  crazy  old 
tenements  occupied  by  some  professional  man  in  a  small  way  of 
business,  with  two  pretty  daughters,  maidens  who  from  the  security 
of  their  father's  abode  would  make  all  sorts  of  loving  demonstra- 
tions to  the  young  scribes  opposite.  Meet  them  outside,  and  their 
eyes  would  be  cast  demurely  upon  the  ground,  chaste  and  virginal. 

*  Those  tapestries  are  now  one  of  the  chief  ornaments  of  the  British 
Embassy  at  Paris. 

108 


The  F.  O.  109 

Half  an  hour  later  they  would  be  at  their  old  tricks,  casting  the  most 
appealing  glances  across  the  shabby  street.  They  were  like  the 
veiled  beauties  of  Constantinople,  who,  knowing  themselves  to  be 
quite  safe,  will  do  all  they  can  to  allure  the  passing  foreigner. 

Poor  Lionel  Moore,  one  of  our  dragomans,  who  had  lived  in  the 
Levant  from  childhood,  used  to  tell  such  amusing  stories  about  those 
elusive  sirens.  One  day  he  was  walking  the  streets  of  Pera  when  he 
saw  a  young  Turkish  lady  riding  upon  a  very  smart  mule,  with  an 
escort  of  three 'or  four  eunuchs,  gloriously  apparelled,  evidently  a 
lady  of  quality.  As  she  passed  Moore  she  partially  put  aside  her 
yashmak  and  gave  him  a  most  bewitching  glance — such  a  look  as 
St.  Anthony  himself  could  not  have  resisted.  He,  always  ready  for 
an  adventure,  followed  the  temptress,  though  the  sun  was  scorching. 
When  she  had  made  a  fool  of  him  long  enough,  the  lady  called  up 
her  chief  eunuch  and  said,  "  You  see  that  infidel  ? — go  and  fetch 
him  a  glass  of  water  to  cool  him  ;  he  must  be  hot."  As  Moore  spoke 
Turkish  like  a  native  the  arrow  hit  the  mark,  and  he  slunk  away, 
discomfited,  down  a  side  street. 

Naturally  it  was  with  no  little  trepidation  and  a  rather  fluttering 
heart  that  on  a  bright  morning  in  the  month  of  February,  1858,  I 
for  the  first  time  set  foot  inside  the  gloomy  portals  of  the  sacrosanct 
F.  O.  But  my  alarm  was  soon  relieved,  for  in  the  hall  were  two 
gorgeous  young  clerks,  sartorially  superb,  both  acquaintances  of 
mine,  who  gave  me  the  kindliest  of  welcomes,  and  saved  me  from 
the  ordeal  of  making  myself  known  to  good  old  Weller,  the  porter. 
The  real  moment  of  terror  came  when  a  few  minutes  later,  having 
sent  in  my  name,  I  was  ushered  into  the  room  of  Mr.  Hammond, 
the  Under-Secretary  of  State.  But  even  in  that  Holy  of  Holies — 
the  temple  of  the  Norns  that  governed  the  destinies  of  nations — fear 
was  dispelled  by  the  great  kindness  of  the  High  Priest. 

Mr.  Hammond  was,  I  su-ppose,  at  that  time  a  man  of  between 
fifty  and  sixty  years  of  age — an  imposing  figure,  big  and  burly, 
with  rather  a  quick,  jerky,  incisive  manner,  which  was  apt  to  make 
men  shy  until  they  got  to  know  him  well,  when  the  goodness  and 
sweetness  of  his  nature  seldom  failed  to  inspire  affection.  He  was 
one  of  the  best  public  servants  that  I  ever  came  across.  He  was  an 
indefatigable  worker,  and  indeed  his  chief  fault  was  that  he  took  too 


no  Memories 

much  upon  his  own  shoulders  ;  at  the  same  time  he  was  more  than 
generous  in  meting  out  praise  to  others. 

There  are  not  many  men  left  who  served  under  him  ;  the  few  that 
are  yet  alive  must,  like  myself,  have  been  pained  by  the  way  in 
which  he  has  been  alluded  to  in  certain  recent  biographical  works. 
Private  letters,  which  were  meant  only  for  the  eyes  of  those  to  whom 
they  were  addressed,  and  were  certainly  never  intended  to  be 
published,  should  be  carefully  edited  before  they  are  put  into  print, 
otherwise  words  set  down  purely  in  jest,  and  inspired  by  the  humour 
of  the  moment,  wear  a  serious  look  which  is  all  the  more  mischievous 
when  the  writer  is  a  great  personage.  Again,  Mr.  Hammond  has 
been  blamed  because  of  his  famous  declaration  to  Lord  Granville 
as  to  the  peaceful  outlook  in  June,  1870.  Was  he  to  blame  for  this 
false  view  of  the  state  of  Europe  ?  His  opinion  was  based  upon  the 
despatches  and — what  is  still  more  important — upon  the  private 
and  confidential  letters  received  from  Her  Majesty's  Ambassadors 
at  Paris  and  Berlin,  and  from  those  who  in  similar  positions  were 
watching  the  course  of  affairs  in  other  capitals. 

It  was  the  various  chancelleries,  and  not  Lord  Hammond,  which 
were  responsible  for  his  statement ;  and  the  wrong  forecast  only 
shows  that  the  blow  fell  suddenly  and  unsuspectedly,  with  the  swift- 
ness of  a  meteorite.  Until  the  "  editing "  of  the  famous  Ems 
telegram,  to  which  I  shall  allude  elsewhere,  took  place,  Bismarck 
himself  did  not  know  how  soon  the  gates  of  the  temple  of  Janus 
were  to  be  thrown  open.  The  secret  was  well  kept  because  it  did 
not  exist.  War  was  the  birth  of  a  moment.  There  had  been  no 
hidden  warlike  preparations  either  in  France  or  in  Germany ; 
indeed,  so  little  was  this  the  case  that  Bismarck  tells  us  that  it  was 
not  until  he  had  consulted  Moltke  as  to  the  relative  states  of  the 
French  and  German  armies,  and  which  of  the  two  would  be  likely 
to  gain  an  advantage  from  an  immediate  declaration  of  war,  that  he 
lighted  the  torch.  ("  Gedanken  und  Erinnerungen,"  Vol.  II., 
99-113.)  So  much  for  the  ungenerous  blame  which  has  been  cast 
upon  Mr.  Hammond  for  his  want  of  political  foresight — an  alto- 
gether unjust  accusation,  founded  upon  ignorance  of  the  condition 
of  affairs  at  the  time. 

Mr.  Hammond  was  the  Foreign  Office;    he  kept  all   the  strings 


The  F.  O.  in 

in  his  own  hands.  Probably  such  a  method  would  be  impossible  in 
these  days  ;  but  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing  his  colossal 
industry  and  retentive  memory  enabled  him  to  direct,  single-handed, 
the  whole  current  work  of  the  department.  He  was  indispensable. 
Of  course  those  matters  in  which  the  policy  of  the  Cabinet  were  at 
stake  were  dealt  with  then,  as  now,  by  the  Secretary  of  State.  But 
it  is  no  small  tribute  to  the  value  set  upon  Mr.  Hammond's  work  by 
successive  Foreign  Ministers  that  no  change  of  Government  affected 
his  position  or  lowered  his  authority. 

Mr.  Hammond  kept  me  with  him  for  a  few  minutes,  warning  me 
that  my  work  at  first  would  be  very  dull,  and  then  he  sent  me  off, 
saying,  "  Remember  that  there  are  no  secrets  here  ;  everybody  is 
trusted,  and  you  will  find  that  nothing  is  hidden  from  you.  But  you 
must  hold  your  tongue."  I  cannot  remember  any  violation  of  that 
rule  until  many  years  afterwards,  when  I  had  left  the  diplomatic 
service,  and  when  a  new  system  had  been  introduced — as  I  think, 
very  unwisely  ;  but  I  do  remember  once,  when  some  twenty  years 
later  there  had  been  a  scandal  in  the  chancellerie  of  an  embassy  of 
another  country,  that  one  of  the  greatest  European  financiers  said 
to  me  :  "  Well,  there  is  one  thing  of  which  England  may  be  proud  : 
the  English  Foreign  Office  is  the  only  one  at  which  we  have  never 
been  able  to  buy  information." 

That  says  something  for  the  old  system  of  nomination,  though  I 
quite  admit  that  there  ought  to  be  a  stiffish  examination  of  the 
nominees  of  the  Secretary  of  State  ;  but  subject  to  that  condition, 
I  think  that  Lord  Clarendon  was  quite  right  when  he  told  a  Com 
mittee  of  the  House  of  Commons  that  he  would  rather  resign  the 
seals  of  the  Foreign  Office  than  surrender  the  right  of  nomination 
to  a  vacant  clerkship. 

I  was  told  oft0  for  the  Slave  Trade  or  African  department — the  only 
one  in  which  there  was  a  vacancy,  and  there  I  remained  for  the  first 
two  years  of  my  service.  The  presiding  genius  was  one  Dolly  Oom, 
a  great  character.  I  do  not  suppose  that  he  was  more  than  fifty 
years  of  age,  but  he  looked  as  old  as  a  grasshopper.  He  was  a  great 
authority  on  dinners,  and  used  to  give  very  choice  little  parties 
in  a  tiny  house  in  Duchess  Street.  In  matters  theatrical,  especially 
in  all  that  related  to  pantomimes,  he  was  an  expert,  and  he  was  a 


1 12  Memories. 

faithful  member  of  the  Old  Stagers  at  Canterbury — not  as  an  actor, 
but  as  the  official  apologist,  and  all  sorts  of  excuses  used  to  be 
invented  for  bringing  him  on  to  the  stage  in  that  capacity,  when,  he 
being  a  favourite  of  many  years'  standing,  his  appearance,  his  fault- 
less attire,  his  courtly  bow,  which  it  was  whispered  was  a  piece  of 
royal  heredity  from  Hanover,  were  received  with  thunderous 
applause.  His  bosom  friend  and  the  hero  of  his  adoration  was 
Charles  Mathews  the  actor. 

Work  in  any  shape  he  detested  ;  if  we  took  him  a  despatch  he 
would  look  at  it  with  a  sigh,  and  say,  "  Put  it  on  the  monceau 
immonde."  What  he  dubbed  the  monceau  immonde  was  a  pile  of 
papers  "to  be  dealt  with,"  carried  backwards  and  forwards  daily 
between  the  press  and  the  middle  table,  which  used  to  grow  and 
grow  until  Wylde,  the  second  in  command,  could  stand  it  no  longer, 
and  would  set  to  work  to  clear  it  all  off,  while  Dolly  Oom,  sipping 
weak  soda-water  and  brandy  and  uttering  incapable  sighs,  would  look 
on  and  shake  his  head  with  a  look  of  outraged  dyspepsia.  There  was 
one  point  upon  which  dear  old  Dolly  Oom  would  stand  no  nonsense. 
All  words  ending  in  ic  must  have  a  final  k — publick,  eccentrick, 
etc.  Soft  and  gentle  as  cotton-wool  in  all  other  matters,  in  this  he 
was  as  hard  and  inexorable  as  the  rock  of  Gibraltar  !  Upon  that  k 
depended  the  validity  of  treaties,  the  whole  authority  of  the 
Secretary  of  State. 

Wylde  was  a  splendid  worker  and  knew  the  African  business  well. 
If  his  minutes  of  between  fifty  and  sixty  years  ago  had  been  acted 
upon,  much  trouble  and  many  tragedies  would  have  been  avoided. 
He  was  convinced  of  the  part  that  South  Africa  must  at  some  future 
time  play  on  the  world's  chessboard.  Unfortunately  the  value  of 
his  opinion  was  largely  discounted  by  the  fact  that  he  had  not  the 
gift  of  writing  ;  moreover,  in  those  days  none  but  European  politics 
were  thought  worthy  of  the  brains  of  statesmen. 

Even  American  affairs,  until  the  war  broke  out  between  North 
and  South,  aroused  little  interest,  and  as  for  Africa,  there  was  only 
one  man  who  took  any  heed  of  it,  and  his  was  a  cry  in  the  wilderness. 

There  was  none  to  hear,  and  poor  Wylde's  minutes  were  buried 
without  hope  of  resurrection  in  the  campo  santo  of  the  Record 
Office. 


The  F.  O.  113 

It  was  rather  a  blow  for  young  Oxford,  full  of  the  zeal  deprecated 
by  Talleyrand,  and  eager  to  distinguish  itself  in  the  most  secret 
negotiations,  to  be  set  down  to  copy  charter-parties  and  cargo-lists 
of  the  filthy  ships  that  were  engaged  in  the  Slave  Trade,  and  which 
sailed  from  New  York  bound  for  St.  Thomas — nominally  the 
St.  Thomas  of  the  West  Indies,  but  in  reality  for  that  ill-omened 
island  off  the  Guinea  Coast  where  the  "  cargo  of  ebony  "  was  to  be 
picked  up.  If  only  the  poor  slaves  could  have  been  consulted,  how 
they  would  have  prayed  against  the  measures  that  were  taken  for 
their  protection  !  A  slave  was  a  chattel  worth  money,  and  would 
repay  care  and  good  food  on  the  voyage.  But  with  Her  Majesty's 
cruisers  always  on  the  alert,  the  poor  wretches  were  battened  down 
under  hatches  in  conditions  so  appalling  that  the  accounts  of  their 
sufferings  were  absolutely  sickening.  Only  the  fittest  and  strongest 
could  by  any  possibility  survive.  How  many  were  thrown  over- 
board for  the  benefit  of  the  sharks  no  man  could  tell. 

We  were  furnished  by  Mr.  Archibald,  our  Consul  at  New  York, 
with  the  most  accurate  information  as  to  all  the  men  and  ships 
engaged  in  the  traffic  ;  we  knew  them  all,  and  we  kept  a  sort  of 
album  and  register,  which  I  started,  from  which  we  sent  out  slips 
to  the  Admiralty  to  be  forwarded  to  the  West  Coast  of  Africa. 
We  got  at  last  to  find  the  sort  of  interest  in  our  work  that  the 
detectives  of  Scotland  Yard  have  in  theirs,  and  to  feel  a  certain 
professional  pride  in  every  conviction.  It  was  interesting  years 
afterwards  to  hear  from  my  old  friend  Billy  Hewitt,  when  he  was 
commanding  the  Basilisk  in  the  China  seas,  of  the  prize  money 
which  those  slips  had  been  the  means  of  putting  into  his  pocket 
when  he  skippered  a  small  vessel  in  the  West  African  squadron. 

There  was  always  plenty  of  work,  though  our  hours  were  very 
late.  We  did  not  begin  until  twelve,  or  even  after  that,  but  then 
we  did  not  strike  the  balance  as  Charles  Lamb  did,  by  going  away 
early.  We  were  often  copying  for  the  mails  till  after  seven  o'clock, 
and  in  stress  of  political  weather  we  had  to  wait  till  almost  any 
hour.  But  the  free  mornings  were  a  great  boon — I  always  had  time 
for  a  drawing  lesson  at  South  Kensington,  or  an  hour's  fencing  and 
gymnastics  at  Harrison's  in  Pant  on  Street,  where  there  was  a  daily 
gathering  of  the  same  men — amongst  them  Lord  Stanley,  then 
VOL.  i  8 


Memories 


Colonial  Minister,  a  very  regular  attendant.  He  would  come  in 
laden  with  a  sheaf  of  blue  books  and  despatches,  speak  to  no  one, 
and  between  his  exercises  bury  himself  in  political  work.  He 
would  leave  as  he  came,  silent  and  self-contained,  carrying  his 
papers  under  his  arm.  He  was  immensely  strong,  but  clumsy  ; 
he  could  have  felled  an  ox,  but  he  would  not  have  done  it  gracefully. 

When  the  late  Lord  Redesdale  was  staying  at  Knowsley,  shortly 
after  Lord  Derby  had  published  his  Iliad,  he  said  to  his  host  :. 
'  What  does  Stanley  think  of  your  Homer  ?  "  "  He  knows 
nothing  about  it,"  answered  Lord  Derby,  laughing,  "  he's  never 
read  it.  You  see  it  isn't  a  Blue  Book  !  "  Probably  no  statesman 
of  Lord  Stanley's  value  has  ever  been  so  little  understood  ;  pre- 
sumably it  was  his  own  choice,  for  certainly  he  did  not  wear  his 
heart  upon  his  sleeve,  nor  could  anyone  accuse  him  of  affability, 
or  of  overmuch  sympathy  with  his  kind.  Perhaps  Lord  Sander- 
son, who  was  not  only  his  private  secretary,  but  his  intimate  and 
trusted  friend  to  boot,  is  the  only  man  who  could  throw  some 
light  upon  that  strange  character. 

Lord  Newton  in  his  life  of  Lord  Lyons  has  one  or  two  ironically 
biting  remarks  about  him  :  "  This  prosaic  nobleman  who  is  credited 
with  having  himself  refused  the  throne  of  Greece."  "  It  must 
have  been  a  congenial  task  for  a  man  of  Lord  Stanley's  tempera- 
ment to  throw  cold  water  upon  the  vague  and  slipshod  proposals 
of  the  unlucky  Emperor  "  (of  the  French)  ;  while  "  Lord  Stanley's 
comment  upon  the  Empress'  frank  and  sensible  conversation  with 
Lord  Lyons,  upon  the  Roman  question,  urging  that  England 
should  take  a  hand  in  it,  was  that  it  furnished  the  best  reason  he 
had  received  yet  for  keeping  out  of  the  affair  altogether.  The 
Emperor's  reason  for  proposing  a  conference  was  that  he  disliked 
bearing  the  responsibility  which  he  had  assumed.  Why  should 
be  be  asked  to  bear  it  for  him  ?  " 

Lord  Stanley,  afterwards  Lord  Derby,  was  certainly  a  remark- 
able man  ;  his  speeches  were  dull  and  prosaic,  but  they  were  full 
of  wise  common  sense  and  they  carried  just  weight.  It  always 
seemed  to  me  that  he  showed  in  his  public  life  those  same 
qualities  which  he  used  to  bring  into  Harrison's  gymnasium  —  the 
strength  of  a  bull  and  the  determination  of  a  gladiator,  without 


The  F.  O.  115 

one  spark  of  enthusiasm,  without  one  care  or  thought  beyond 
doing  to  the  best  of  his  great  power  what  lay  to  his  hand.  A 
well-balanced,  well-informed  study  of  Lord  Stanley  would  be  a 
human  document  of  great  interest. 

At  the  end  of  two  years  I  was  moved  out  of  the  Slave  Trade 
into  the  French  department,  which,  of  course,  was  the  most  impor- 
tant and  hardest- worked  of  the  many  divisions,  for  the  Paris 
Embassy  was  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of  branch  Foreign  Office  ; 
there  could  be  no  diplomatic  subject  in  which  France  was  not 
interested  equally  with  England,  whether  in  agreement  or  in 
rivalry.  So  every  despatch  of  any  slightest  importance — not  to 
speak  of  many  which  had  none — was  marked  to  be  copied  for 
Paris.  I  used  to  wonder  whether  Lord  Cowley,  insatiable  worker 
as  he  was,  could  find  time  to  read  all  that  we  so  painfully  copied. 

Such  questions  as  those  of  the  Danish  duchies  and  the  Danubian 
principalities  (still  alive  under  the  title  of  "  the  Balkans  ")  were 
the  favourite  pabulum  of  all  the  Ministers  at  the  small  German 
courts,  worthy  men  whose  capacity  for  spoiling  paper  was  in  exact 
proportion  to  the  greatness  of  their  unimportance.  I  remember 
at  Stuttgart  an  industrious  creature  who  had  all  the  spinning 
powers  of  a  hen-spider. 

There  were  no  typewriters  in  those  days  ;  it  was  all  honest, 
strenuous  copying  from  mid-day  sometimes  till  night.  Still  much 
of  the  work  was  of  absorbing  interest,  and  the  labour  was  lightened 
by  delightful  companionship.  Staveley  was  the  head  of  the  depart- 
ment, a  right  good  fellow,  and  a  fine  skater  of  the  days  when  the 
members  of  the  Skating  Club  used  to  disport  themselves  in  the 
Regent's  Park,  or  on  the  Serpentine,  in  tail  coats  and  top  hats ; 
Croker  Pennell,  a  great  character,  was  second ;  Scott  Gifford,  a  dear 
memory  (great  friend  of  Goldsmid  and  Jenny  Lind,  whom  I  heard 
sing  at  his  house) ;  Henry  Eliot,  the  late  Lord  St.  Germans,  Bobsy 
Meade — both  of  them  most  justly  popular.  Later  my  old  friend, 
W.  A.  Cockerell,  happily  still  alive.  It  would  have  been  difficult 
to  find  a  more  sympathetic  crew. 

Among   the    other    colleagues    we    had    John    Bid  well,    clever, 
agreeable,  and  much  loved  by  all  who  knew  him  well ;    Johnnie 
Woodford,  a  handsome  tenorino,  an  intimate  friend,  like  myself, 
VOL.  i  8* 


n6  Memories. 

of  Mario  and  Grisi,  and  much  behind  the  scenes  of  Covent  Garden  ; 
Beauty  Stephens  a  strange  compound  of  wit  and  muddleheaded- 
ness,  with  a  wonderful  gift  of  hitting  off  a  character  in  a  couple  of 
words  ;  Anderson,  rather  solid  and  solemn,  very  popular  on  the 
steps  of  the  Rag,  to  which  it  always  seemed  as  if  he  ought  to  have 
belonged — indeed  that  wicked  Stephens  said  of  him  that  he 
"  would  have  been  a  heavy  dragoon,  only  there  was  no  regiment 
heavy  enough  for  him  ;  "  cranky  little  Cavendish,  whose  memoirs 
have  been  published,  and  to  whom,  when  he  came  back  to  work 
after  a  short  illness,  and  complained  that  he  was  not  quite  himself 
yet,  John  Bidwell  said  rather  cruelly  :  "  Well,  Dish  !  don't  you 
think  that  might  perhaps  be  an  improvement  !  " 

There  were  a  score  or  more  of  others,  now  alas  !  gone,  all  of 
whom  have  left  pleasant  memories  behind  them.  Of  course  in 
so  large  a  zoological  collection  there  were  some  who  did  not  belong 
to  the  Phoenix  tribe  ;  we  had  our  apes  and  we  had  our  bears  ;  but 
in  looking  back  upon  those  happy  old  days  I  claim  the  privilege 
of  the  sun-dial,  and  among  the  hours  record  only  the  serene. 

Several  of  those  who  were  in  the  Foreign  Office  at  the  same 
time  with  me  reached  great  distinction.  Lord  Vivian  became 
Ambassador  at  Rome,  Philip  Currie,  so  long  private  secretary 
to  the  great  Lord  Salisbury,  and  one  of  the  staunchest  of  my 
friends,  was  raised  to  the  peerage,  having  been  Ambassador  suc- 
cessively at  Constantinople  and  Rome.  Lord  Sanderson,  after 
being  for  a  long  time  Under-Secretary  of  State,  was  also  raised 
to  the  peerage.  Sir  Francis  Bertie,  some  years  junior  to  me,  ought 
to  be  leaving  the  Embassy  at  Paris,  after  a  most  brilliant  career, 
under  the  age  limit,  but  such  a  man  cannot  be  spared  at  a  critical 
moment,  and  so  he  is  staying  on  with  the  due  reward  of  a 
peerage.  Robert  Meade  went  to  the  Colonial  Office,  earned  the 
highest  distinction  under  many  chiefs,  including  Mr.  Joseph 
Chamberlain,  who  knew  the  value  of  a  good  man.  Drummond 
Wolf  also  went  to  the  Colonial  Office  as  private  secretary  to  Lord 
Lytton  in  1858 ;  then  was  sent  as  Colonial  Secretary  to  the 
Ionian  Islands,  and  when  they  were  given  up  (proh  pudor  /) 
was  offered  his  choice  between  a  C.B.  and  a  K.C.M.G.  Not 
without  an  eye  to  its  financial  value  he  chose  the  latter  ;  but 


The  F.  O.  117 

he  was  afterwards  promoted  into  far  higher  regions,  as  G.C.B., 
Minister  to  Persia,  where  it  is  said  his  rather  risky  stories  delighted 
the  Shah,  and  finally  as  Ambassador  to  Spain.  All  these  and 
others  whom  I  have  not  mentioned  have  played  their  part  in  the 
world,  contributing  their  quota  to  its  advancement.  And  after  all, 
that  is  what  makes  life  worth  the  living — that  is  what  distinguishes 
man  from  a  possible  ancestral  jelly-fish. 

1860. — Those  were  days  of  freedom,  when  men  might  sit  up  and 
feast  and  amuse  themselves  as  late  as  they  pleased.  Grand- 
motherly legislation  had  not  yet  set  its  canon  by  which,  when  the 
clock  strikes  the  curfew  the  lights  in  all  hostelries  must  be  ex- 
tinguished, the  grandchildren  must  fly  from  bar  and  refreshment 
room,  and  be  sent  virtuously,  even  if  supperless,  to  bed. 

On  the  night  of  the  idth-iyth  of  April,  1860,  the  inns  and  public 
houses  in  London  remained  open  all  night ;  some  twelve  thousand 
persons  did  not  go  to  bed  at  all,  for  on  the  morning  of  the  I7th 
the  great  fight  for  the  championship  of  the  world  was  to  take 
place — somewhere — between  Tom  Sayers  and  Heenan,  the  great 
American  fighter  known  as  the  Benicia  Boy.  The  whereabouts 
was  kept  so  dark  that  it  was  not  until  the  last  moment  that  we 
who  had  taken  tickets  were  even  allowed  to  know  from  what 
station  we  were  to  go.  The  whole  affair  was  shrouded  in  mystery. 
The  two  principals  were  being  closely  watched  by  the  police,  and 
Tom  Sayers  only  made  good  his  escape  from  Newmarket  in  a  horse- 
box in  the  disguise  of  a  stableman  in  charge  of  one  of  the  horses 
belonging  to  Sam  Rogers,  the  trainer.  As  for  us,  we  had  to  hang 
about  Ben  Caunt  and  Nat  Langham's  public-houses  waiting, 
until  we  received  our  sailing  orders  and  rushed  off  to  London 
Bridge,  the  start  having  been  fixed  for  four  in  the  morning. 

No  fight  had  ever  created  so  much  excitement ;  it  was  the  first 
contest  of  an  international  character,  so  that  the  fever  was  as 
high  in  the  New  World  as  in  the  Old.  In  the  hurrying  crowd 
there  were  great  numbers  of  Americans,  while  peers,  members 
of  Parliament  and  men  of  high  degree  jostled  the  bullet-headed, 
broken-nosed  members  of  the  prize  ring,  pickpockets,  bookmakers, 
publicans  and  sinners.  The  Sunday  papers  went  so  far  as  to  say 
— but  that  was  absolutely  untrue — that  such  big-wigs  as  Lord 


Memories 


Palm  erst  on  and  a  sporting  Bishop  were  present.  So  great  was 
the  interest  that  even  the  Times  devoted  three  of  its  sacrosanct 
columns  to  a  masterly  description  of  the  battle.  I  believe  it  was 
the  first  time  that  such  an  honour  was  conferred  upon  the  prize 
ring,  and  it  is  said  that  the  secret  of  the  authorship  is  now 
unknown  even  to  the  Times  chief. 

My  companion  that  night  was  Henry  Coke,  Lord  Leicester's 
brother,  who  has  himself  chronicled  the  event  in  his  clever  book 
"  Moss  from  a  Rolling  Stone." 

The  train  stopped  near  Farnborough.  It  was  an  ideal  spring 
dawn,  as  sweet  and  fresh  as  the  perfume  of  the  pine  woods  could 
make  it,  and  the  birds  were  singing  as  if  they  would  burst  their 
throats.  It  seemed  a  shame  and  a  desecration  to  use  such  a 
morning  as  we  were  about  to  do  ;  but  we  were  too  much  excited, 
too  eager,  stirred  by  the  cruel  lust  of  fighting,  to  take  heed  of  that. 
The  ropes  and  stakes  were  soon  set  up  and  there  was  an  immense 
amount  of  pushing  and  scrambling  for  places  near  Tom  Savers' 
corner,  so  we  had  to  stand  among  the  Americans  near  Heenan. 
That,  however,  was  a  good  place  to  see  from,  for  Heenan,  having 
won  the  toss,  naturally  chose  the  corner  in  which  he  would  have 
the  sun  at  his  back,  and  those  opposite  to  us  had  the  disadvantage, 
like  Tom  himself,  of  having  the  sun  in  their  eyes. 

When  Sayers  first  threw  his  cap  into  the  ring,  he  was  dressed 
in  a  most  appalling  suit  of  dark  green  tartan.  His  taste  in  dress 
was  always  grotesque,  for  during  his  last  years,  when  he  had  retired 
from  the  ring,  he  must  needs  wear  hessian  boots  with  tassels, 
gartered  with  the  inscription  "  Tom  Sayers,  Champion  "  round  the 
knee.  But  when  he  stripped  he  was  the  picture  of  an  athlete. 
He  was  a  short,  good-humoured  looking  man,  with  a  tremendous 
development  of  the  neck  and  shoulders,  which  gave  the  driving 
power  to  his  blows  ;  his  dark  skin,  brown  and  tanned,  looking  as 
though  he  had  been  carved  out  of  old  oak,  shone  in  the  morning 
sun.  There  was  no  question  about  it  :  he  was  trained  to  perfec- 
tion ;  the  muscles  in  the  back  especially  were  so  sharply  defined 
that  they  might  have  been  mapped  round  with  a  pencil.  Heenan, 
on  the  contrary,  seemed  to  me  —  and  many  good  judges  shared  my 
opinion  —  to  have  been  trained  a  little  too  fine,  and  perhaps  rather 


The  F.  O.  119 

too  rapidly  ;  the  skin  upon  his  face  seemed  loose,  and  that  would 
account  for  the  way  in  which  it  swelled  and  puffed  up  under  the 
terrible  punishment  of  Tom's  iron  knuckles. 

But  one  thing  struck  everybody  present :  how  was  Tom  Sayers, 
superb  fighter  as  he  was,  to  stand  up  against  that  giant  ?  Yet  he 
did,  and  what  is  more,  in  my  opinion  if  ever  a  man  won  a  fight  he 
did.  There  was  a  foul  claimed  in  the  hurly-burly  confusion  at  the 
end,  but  upon  that  I  do  not  rely.  I  go  by  the  condition  to  which  his 
dauntless  courage  and  generalship  ended  by  reducing  his  enemy. 

A  great  deal  was  said  about  the  number  of  times  that  Sayers 
was  knocked  down.  What  happened  was  this.  Quite  early  in 
the  fight  Sayers  had  drawn  first  blood  from  Heenan,  when  there 
arose  such  a  shout  of  triumph  as  had  hardly  been  heard  since  the 
myrmidons  cheered  at  the  death  of  Hector.  Heenan  then  scored 
by  twice  knocking  Tom  down.  Those  were  fair  knock-down 
blows,  and  great  was  the  exultation  of  the  American  party. 
Shortly  afterwards  in  guarding  a  tremendous  blow  with  his  right 
arm,  Tom  received  an  injury  which  rendered  it  useless.  It  was 
said  that  the  small  bone  was  broken,  but  that  was  afterwards 
denied.  In  any  case,  he  was  evidently  in  cruel  pain,  and  the  limb 
began  to  swell  up  and  was  practically  paralysed.  This  was  all 
the  more  hard  upon  him,  as  in  fighting  he  was  wont  to  rely  so 
greatly  on  his  right — his  "  Doctor  "  as  he  used  to  call  it,  because 
"  it  would  finish  off  his  man."  Most  men  would  have  given  in 
at  once.  Not  so  Tom  Sayers.  He  had  lost  his  best  weapon,  and 
he  was  suffering  torture  ;  the  great  giant  was  towering  in  front  of 
him,  threatening  and  terrible  ;  but  never  for  one  moment  did  Tom 
flinch  or  falter  ;  his  gallant  soul  forced  him  to  hold  on,  and  having 
only  one  arm,  he  must  now  fight  with  his  brains. 

From  that  tune  forth,  whenever  Heenan  delivered  one  of  his 
slashing  blows,  there  was  no  guardian  right  with  which  to  parry 
it,  so  Tom  caught  it  as  a  man  catches  a  cricket  ball,  yielding  to  it, 
and  thus  went  down  with  the  blow,  smiling  and  unhurt.  It  was 
the  only  way — I  watched  it  over  and  over  again,  and  when  at  each 
knock-down  the  Americans  wildly  shouted  victory  for  Heenan, 
I  felt  that  they  were  counting  unhatched  chickens.  All  of  a  sudden 
there  was  a  crash  which  rang  almost  like  metal  over  the  field.  Tom 


I2O  Memories. 

Sayers,  ducking  before  a  deadly  blow  from  his  assailant,  had  dashed 
in  with  his  left  and  cut  open  Heenan's  cheek  with  an  ugly  gash 
which  presently  swelled  and  almost  closed  one  eye  at  once.  The 
American,  big  man  as  he  was,  staggered  under  it.  From  that 
moment  I  felt  that,  given  fair  play,  the  battle  was  won,  and  that, 
as  I  can  affirm  from  what  I  heard  around  me,  was  the  fear  in  the 
American  corner. 

Round  after  round  Tom  came  up,  with  dogged  determination 
written  in  his  unscarred  face,  relying  upon  the  same  tactics,  attack- 
ing first  one  eye  and  then  the  other  until  Heenan  was  rapidly 
getting  blind.  Then  came  a  dastardly  act.  The  American,  having 
got  Sayers'  head  in  chancery  under  his  left  arm,  twisted  his  right 
round  the  rope  of  the  ring  and  with  the  purchase  so  gained  tried 
to  strangle  Tom,  who  struck  out  at  him  gamely,  but  was  unable 
to  break  loose.  He  was  getting  black  in  the  face  when  the 
umpires  cut  the  rope.  It  was  a  mean  and  a  cruel  trick  and  was 
practically  the  last  act  of  a  fight  in  which  Sayers  had  all  the 
honours. 

The  end  was  at  hand.  For  some  time  past  a  blue  cloud  of 
policemen  had  been  hovering  in  the  distance  without  attempting 
to  interfere.  Heenan's  backers  saw  their  chance,  the  ring  was 
broken  into  by  the  Americans,  the  police,  seeing  that  matters  were 
taking  a  nasty  turn,  rushed  in,  and  the  ring  became  a  seething 
mass  of  surging,  pushing,  scrambling  men,  the  principals  trying 
in  vain  to  continue  a  fight  in  the  midst  of  what  was  now  a  mere 
angry,  howling  mob. 

As  for  Heenan,  so  blind  was  he  that  he  struck  his  own  second, 
and  it  was  also  said  that  he  hit  Sayers  when  the  latter  was  sitting 
on  his  second's  knee.  A  foul  was  claimed,  but  it  was  not  possible 
for  the  referee  to  act  in  such  a  tumult,  or,  indeed,  to  see.  There 
was  a  general  stampede  for  the  train. 

Heenan  could  no  longer  see  and  had  to  be  led  by  two  men. 
There  was  a  little  quick-set  hedge  over  which  Tom  Sayers  flew  as 
gaily  as  a  bird.  Heenan  was  hi  some  fashion  pushed  or  dragged 
through  it,  a  helpless  "  man-mountain,"  so  mauled  that  he  was 
scarcely  human.  Barring  his  disabled  arm,  Tom  seemed  none  the 
worse ;  his  face  hardly  showed  a  scratch.  There  can  be  no 


The  F.  O.  121 

reasonable  doubt  that  if  Heenan's  friends,  seeing  his  plight,  had 
not  forced  their  way  inside  the  ropes  and  broken  up  the  ring,  five 
more  minutes  must  inevitably  have  given  Tom  Sayers  a  glorious 
victory.  As  it  was,  the  mere  fact  that  he,  one-armed  and  inferior 
in  height,  weight  and  reach  to  an  adversary  who  looked  fit  to  crush 
him,  should  only  have  lost  his  chance  owing  to  a  dirty  trick,  was 
simply  marvellous.  It  was  an  exhibition  of  bulldog  courage  which 
in  its  way  will  probably  never  be  beaten. 

One  thing  should  in  justice  be  recorded.  Heenan's  backers 
behaved  badly,  but  they  were  a  very  low  class,  and  I  am  bound 
to  say  that  I  did  not  see  a  single  American  gentleman  among  them. 
The  men  whom  I  knew  afterwards  in  New  York  would  have  been 
as  disgusted  as  I  was. 

It  was  a  great  event.  Heenan  was  certainly  a  magnificent 
specimen  of  humanity  and  a  great  athlete.  In  build  and  figure 
he  reminded  me  of  the  statue  of  the  dying  gladiator.  He  stood 
six  feet  one  and  a  half  inches,  while  Tom  Sayers  only  measured 
five  feet  eight  and  a  half  inches.  But  Tom  was  a  wonder.  There 
have  been  greater  boxers — Jem  Mace  to  wit ;  but  as  a  fighter 
he  was  incomparable.  Apart  from  his  courage,  his  tact  and 
judgment  were  phenomenal — not  once  did  he  let  an  opportunity 
slip.  Relying  upon  these  qualities,  his  great  soul  never  hesitated 
when  there  was  a  question  of  pitting  himself  against  such  giants 
as  the  Tipton  Slasher,  Aaron  Jones  and  others.  He  was  ready  to 
face  any  odds.  Nat  Langham  was  the  only  man  who  ever  beat 
him.  The  fight  with  Heenan,  which  lasted  two  hours  and  six 
minutes,  was  his  last  appearance  in  the  ring. 

When  we  think  of  the  sums  earned  by  Carpentier,  Jack  Johnson 
and  the  glove  fighters  of  to-day,  it  seems  almost  incredible  that 
fifty-five  years  ago  a  fight  for  the  international  championship 
should  have  taken  place  for  no  more  than  £200  a  side,  and  that  the 
subscription  got  up  for  Sayers  should  have  amounted  only  to  a 
sum  of  £3,000,  settled  upon  him  with  remainder  to  his  children, 
on  condition  that  he  should  never  fight  again. 

Heenan  fought  once  more  in  England,  with  Tom  King,  who 
beat  him.  Curiously  enough,  on  this  occasion  Sayers  was  his  old 
adversary's  second.  Tom  King  was  a  splendidly  handsome  man. 


122  Memories 

I  saw  him  make  his  first  appearance  in  London  at  a  benefit  at  the 
Canterbury  Hall,  a  tall  slip  of  a  lad,  six  feet  two  inches,  looking 
like  a  young  Apollo.  He  had  been  a  sailor  and  his  long  arms  were 
phenomenally  developed  by  hauling  at  the  ropes,  in  days  when  there 
were  still  ropes.  He  was  matched,  with  the  gloves  of  course, 
against  a  huge  negro.  The  two  smote  at  one  another,  rushing 
round  the  ring  with  as  little  science  as  schoolboys  ;  it  was  a  mere 
"  rough  and  tumble."  Harrison,  the  famous  fencing  master, 
who  was  standing  by  me,  turned  round  to  me  and  said,  "  That 
youngster,  properly  trained  and  taught,  ought  to  make  a  cham- 
pion." It  was  a  sound  prophecy,  for  Tom  King  worked  hard,  made 
himself  into  a  famous  fighter,  defeated  Jem  Mace,  the  prince  of 
boxers,  and  finally  won  his  battle  with  Heenan  for  £2,000.  Prices 
were  beginning  to  go  up.  Neither  man  ever  fought  again.  Tom 
King,  who  was  a  steady,  clever  fellow,  became  a  bookmaker  and 
gathered  together  a  comfortable  fortune. 

Heenan  was  the  husband  of  the  beautiful  poetess,  Ada  Isaac 
Menken,  whose  talent  Swinburne  admired  so  much,  and  who  dedi- 
cated her  poems  to  Charles  Dickens.  When  she  was  on  the  stage  her 
wonderful  beauty  created  a  furore  in  Mazeppa.  I  took  a  special  in- 
terest in  Heenan  because  he  was  a  pupil  of  Aaron  Jones,  to  whom  I 
have  alluded  in  my  account  of  Oxford  days,  and  who  went  out  to 
America  in  1858.  In  the  words  of  the  Chinese  sage,  we  were  Tung 
yen  ("  same  ink  "),  that  is  to  say,  we  had  dipped  our  pens  in  the 
same  ink,  which,  being  further  interpreted,  means  that  we  were  pupils 
of  the  same  master.  So  much  can  a  Confucius  say  hi  two  syllables. 

Let  me  go  back  a  year.  In  the  autumn  of  1859  came  the  volun- 
teer movement — a  clarion  cry  in  answer  to  the  memorial  of  the 
French  colonels  who  were  spurring  on  their  Emperor  to  make 
war  upon  this  country.  All  England  was  bristling  with  martial 
ardour.  The  Duke  of  Westminster,  then  Lord  Grosvenor,  started 
the  Queen's  Westminsters ;  Lord  Elcho  the  London  Scottish ;  Lord 
Ranelagh,  the  "  Brompton  Garibaldi  "*  as  he  was  called,  the  South 

*  Lord  Ranelagh's  long  hair  and  beard  gave  him  a  certain  look  of  Gari- 
baldi. He  was  one  of  the  best  of  good  fellows,  and  had  been  a  gallant  soldier 
in  Spain,  though  in  the  opposite  camp  to  Wylde.  He  did  much  to  make  the 
volunteer  movement  popular.  • 


The  F.  O.  123 

Middlesex.  Most  of  us  clerks  joined  the  movement.  Wylde,  who 
had  seen  service  in  Spain  with  Sir  de  Lacy  Evans,  became  second 
in  command  to  Lord  Ranelagh,  and,  when  his  colonel  died, 
succeeded  him;  I  was  one  of  the  early  recruits  of  the  Queen's 
Westminsters.  We  had  great  fun,  but  it  needed  no  little  courage 
to  appear  in  uniform,  for  the  grey  tunics  were  irresistible  as 
matter  for  chaff  by  the  many-headed. 

The  Foreign  Office  had  always  been  active  in  volunteering,  for 
when  the  Queen  reviewed  the  Volunteers  in  Hyde  Park  in  1860, 
one  of  the  privates  in  the  Queen's  Westminsters  was  old  Mr.  Byng — 
"  Poodle "  Byng — about  whose  identity  Sir  Herbert  Maxwell 
has  got  into  such  a  muddle  in  his  "  Life  of  Lord  Clarendon."  He 
had  been  a  clerk  in  the  Foreign  Office  and  had  been  a  private  in 
the  Volunteers  when  they  were  reviewed  by  King  George  the  Third. 
He  was  called  "  Poodle  "  on  account  of  his  crisp,  curly  hair — made 
a  mesalliance — and  continued  to  be  a  pet  in  Society  as  a  bachelor 
until  his  death. 

I  remember  how,  in  one  of  the  extravaganzas  by  Planche  brought 
out  by  Charles  Mathews  and  Madame  Vestris  at  the  Lyceum, 
a  huge  poodle  was  brought  upon  the  stage.  There  was  a  large 
gathering  of  well  known  people  in  the  audience,  and  Poodle  Byng 
was  in  a  box  with  some  great  ladies.  When  the  great  curly  dog 
came  to  the  front  there  was  loud  applause,  and  the  stalls  turned 
their  glasses  upon  Mr.  Byng,  who  stood  up  in  his  box  and  bowed 
his  acknowledgments  of  the  compliment.  Sir  Herbert  Maxwell 
confounds  him  with  Mr.  Byng,  a  Privy  Councillor,  another  well- 
known  man  of  political  importance,  whereas  the  Poodle  could  not 
lay  claim  to  being  anything — unless,  indeed,  it  was  something  to 
have  been  reviewed  by  George  the  Third  and  half  a  century  later 
by  Queen  Victoria. 

A  clerk  in  the  Foreign  Office  at  that  time  carried  with  him  a 
passport  to  all  that  was  best  in  political,  diplomatic,  literary  and 
artistic  society.  The  best  clubs,  from  the  Travellers'  downwards, 
opened  their  doors  to  him,  unless  there  was  something  personally 
objectionable  in  him.  And  if  the  Devil  found  no  idle  hands  among 
us  for  mischief  during  the  daytime,  our  evenings  were  bright  and 
well  filled,  for  even  during  the  dullest  months  there  was  always 


Memories. 

something  to  be  done  ;  not  that  by  my  allusion  to  Dr.  Watts  I 
wish  it  to  be  inferred  that  that  something  was  always  mischievous 
— indeed,  I  think  we  were  fairly  good  boys,  as  boys  go,  with  not 
much  more  than  just  so  much  of  wickedness  in  us  as  suffices  to 
give  a  spice  to  life. 

Week-ends  were  at  that  time  unknown.  Saturdays  and  Sundays 
were  the  great  days  for  dinners,  and  anybody  who  had  attempted 
to  decoy  a  youth  into  the  country  for  a  Saturday-to-Monday 
party  would  have  been  looked  upon  as  kind,  perhaps,  but  a  lunatic 
certainly.  Lady  Palmerston's  Saturday  night  parties  at  Cambridge 
House,  now  the  Naval  and  Military  Club,  were  gatherings  at  which 
everybody  that  was  distinguished  above  his  fellows  in  any  branch 
of  life  was  to  be  seen.  Lady  Palmerston,  gracious,  and  still  showing 
great  traces  of  beauty,  presided  over  a  tea-table  in  a  little  inner 
room  to  which  special  favourites  were  admitted.  Lord  Palmerston, 
gay,  smiling  and  full  of  geniality — still  "  Cupid  "  not  only  to  his 
contemporaries  but  also  to  the  youngest  arid  most  attractive  of 
the  matrons,  for  to  the  end  he  retained  a  great  eye  for  beauty — 
had  a  kind  word  for  everybody,  young  and  old.  It  was  not  only 
the  Megatherium  that  was  made  welcome. 

Once  I  got  into  disgrace.  It  was  in  1862.  Lady  Palmerston 
gave  a  ball,  and  I  was  told  off  to  lead  the  cotillon.  There  had  been 
some  late  nights  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  Lord  Palmerston 
was  looking  fagged  and  worn  though  he  was  smiling  as  ever — at 
three  in  the  morning  I  thought  the  hostess  would  be  glad  if  the 
ball  came  to  an  end  and  she,  who  must  also  have  been  very  tired, 
for  she  always  sat  up  for  him,  might  go  to  bed,  so  I  stopped  the 
cotillon,  expecting  great  praise  ;  but  Lady  Palmerston,  on  the 
contrary,  was  furious,  and  for  three  whole  weeks  I  received  no 
Saturday  invitation  ;  but  when  the  fourth  Saturday  came  round 
I  was  forgiven,  taken  into  favour  again,  and  bidden  to  listen  to 
the  friendly  song  of  the  tea-kettle  in  the  inner  sanctum. 

The  guests  at  those  parties  would  have  furnished  the  sitters 
for  a  whole  National  Portrait  Gallery.  The  great  Lord  Shaftesbury, 
his  gigantic  stature  towering  above  all  others,  the  solemn  gravity 
of  his  rather  melancholy  countenance  relieved  by  its  goodness 
and  loving  kindness.  His  wife,  Lady  Palmerston's  eldest  daughter, 


The  F.  O.  125 

still  beautiful  in  spite  of  her  handsome  family  of  grown-up  sons 
and  daughters  ;  her  sister,  Lady  Jocelyn,  irresistibly  fascinating ; 
Lord  John  Russell's  diminutive  figure,  with  pinched,  eager  features, 
reminding  one  of  Holbein's  portrait  of  Erasmus,  the  divine  begging- 
letter  writer ;  Lord  Clarendon,  sunny  and  handsome,  as  radiant 
and  eager  as  if  he  had  not  all  his  life  been  a  martyr  to  gout  and 
the  affairs  of  State — both  poison ;  Delane,  the  Jupiter  of  the  Times, 
burly  and  genial,  compeller  of  men  ;  Borthwick,  of  the  Morning 
Post,  who  achieved  the  feat  of  writing  for  the  Owl  a  letter  signed 
by  the  French  Emperor  of  such  apparent  authenticity  that  the 
Emperor  actually  contradicted  it.  Laurence  Oliphant,  a  mystic 
in  lavender  kid  gloves,  full  of  spiritualism,  strange  creeds,  and  skits 
upon  Society  ;  Macaulay,  a  whirlwind  of  talk  and  knowledge  ; 
Lord  Sherbrooke,  that  wonderful  Albino  blinking  out  of  his  pink, 
almost  blind  eyes,  delighting  everybody  with  his  conversation 
and  himself  with  the  belief  that  his  chief  joy  was  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  beautiful  scenery  which,  alas  !  he  never  saw.  The  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  red  and  bearded ;  Mr.  Gladstone  ;  Disraeli — for  the 
drawing-room  at  Cambridge  House  was  a  neutral  territory,  on 
which  foes  might  meet  in  pseudo  amity.  Quin,  the  great  homoeo- 
path, dealing  in  allopathic  doses  only  where  wit  and  fun  and  good, 
kindly  humour  were  concerned.  Bernal  Osborne,  always  brilliant  ; 
Alfred  Montgomery,  one  of  the  very  few  remaining  bright  satellites 
of  the  firmament  in  which  Lady  Blessington  and  D'Orsay  shone  as 
the  chief  stars  ;  Charles  Villiers,  a  host  in  himself  ;  Charles  Greville, 
the  writer  of  the  famous  memoirs  ;  and  how  many  others  ! 

But  why  go  on  making  a  sort  of  Morning  Post  list  of  the  famous 
men  of  those  days  !  Of  some  of  them  I  shall  speak  later.  What  a 
dream  of  Fair  Women  !  The  Duchess  of  Manchester — like  tht 
lovely  Gunning,  twice  a  Duchess — then  in  the  heyday  of  her  beauti- 
ful youth  ;  Lady  Constance  Grosvenor,  with  the  majesty  of  a  Juno 
and  the  smile  of  a  Hebe  ;  Mrs.  Dick  Bulkeley,  who  looked  as  if  she 
had  sat  for  Millais'  "  Cinderella  "  and  had  come  straight  out  of 
fairy-land  ;  Lady  Mary  Craven,  the  very  type  of  lovely  English 
womanhood  bursting  from  bud  into  bloom  ;  Baroness  Alphonse  de 
Rothschild,  with  liquid  almond-shaped  eyes,  and  the  sweet 
complexion  of  a  tea-rose,  and  how  many  more  ! 


126  Memories 

How  well  I  remember  another  beauty  walking  up  that  staircase  ; 
Greuze's  Cruche  Cassee  in  person,  a  frightened  child  of  seventeen, 
with  great,  wondering  eyes  new  to  the  world  which  one  day  she  was 
to  command  !  Among  the  elder  women  notable  were  the  three 
glorious  Sheridan  sisters,  Mrs.  Norton,  to  look  upon  whom  was  a 
joy,  to  talk  with  her  an  education.  Lady  Dufferin,  who  seemed  to 
be  an  incarnation  of  one  of  her  own  poems  : 

"Oh!  Bay  of  Dublin,  my  heart  your  troubling 
Your  beauty  haunts  me  like  a  fever  dream," 

and  the  Duchess  of  Somerset,  the  lovely  Queen  of  the  Eglinton 
Tournament,  whose  witty  sayings  ran  round  the  town  like  a 
veritable  feu  follet. 

Of  course  the  very  pick  of  the  diplomatic  body  was  represented. 
Count  Apponyi,  the  Austrian  ambassador,  a  grand  representative 
of  the  proud  Hungarian  noblesse — his  wife,  a  Russian  by  birth,  great 
amongst  great  ladies  ;  the  Persignys,  he  the  close  and  well-beloved 
friend  of  Louis  Napoleon,  and  his  wife — a  delightful  madcap — a 
grand-daughter  of  Marshal  Ney — the  brave  des  braves — were  the 
most  popular  of  the  Ambassadors.  D'Azeglio,  tall,  handsome  and 
rather  pompous,  the  intimate  friend  of  the  Shaftesburys,  was 
always  a  marked  figure.  Count  Nicholas  Pahlen,  brother  of  the 
hero  of  the  conspiracy  against  the  Emperor  Paul  in  1801 — a  man 
of  great  stature,  though  bowed  by  age,  pale,  stony-eyed  and  rather 
grim-looking,  with  a  most  surprising  knowledge  of  the  family 
histories  of  all  Europe,  must  be  famous  for  having,  though  a 
foreigner,  by  his  influence  forbidden  smoking  in  the  morning-room 
of  the  St.  James's  Club  for  something  like  a  quarter  of  a  century — 
indeed,  so  long  as  he  lived. 

Another  great  character  was  old  Count  Sztreletzki — a  great 
traveller,  diner-out  and  raconteur.  He  had  a  capital  story  which 
he  used  to  tell,  interlarded,  as  all  his  talk  was,  with  little  jerky 
"  H'm  !  H'm's  !  "  given  in  what  the  Chinese  call  the  "  rising  tone," 
about  the  Due  de  Malakoff  who  preceded  the  Due  de  Persigny's 
second  appointment  as  French  Ambassador. 

The  grumpy,  coarse  old  warrior  had  been  invited  to  Strathfield- 
saye  a  September  for  partridge  shooting.  In  a  field  bordering  a 


The  F.  O.  127 

wood  a  number  of  cock  pheasants  were  strutting  about  in  all  the 
confidence  of  a  close  month.  This  was  too  much  for  the  Marshal, 
who  was  immediately  seized  with  an  uncontrollable  desire  to  slay 
one.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  consulted  Smith  the  keeper,  who 
opined  that  "  We  might  put  it  down  in  the  book  as  a  partridge." 
So  the  Marshal  stalked  an  old  cock  on  the  ground,  blazed  and  missed 
him — fired  a  second  time  and  wounded  the  bird,  who  tried  to  run 
away,  but  the  ambassador  rushed  after  him,  caught  him  and  dashed 
his  brains  out  against  a  tree,  crying  out,  "  Enfin,  brigand  !  je  te 
tiens  !  "  "  That,"  said  the  Duke  to  Smith,  as  they  were  watching 
the  achievement,  "  is  the  great  Field-Marshal  Duke  of  Malakoff, 
who  smoked  out  four  hundred  Arabs  in  a  cavern  in  Algeria." 
"  Well,  your  grace,"  answered  the  keeper  contemptuously,  "  a  man 
who  would  treat  a  cock-pheasant  like  that,  and  in  September  too, 
there  is  no  saying  what  he  might  not  do  to  a  Arab." 

As  I  write,  the  ghosts  of  bygone  days  rise  up  before  me.  The 
ghosts  of  men  who  were  wise  and  great  and  noble  ;  the  ghosts  of 
women  who  fulfilled  their  mission  in  life  by  being  supremely  beau- 
tiful, gracious,  and  attractive.  That  was  the  secret  of  their  power 
— of  their  influence  ;  invested  with  those  regalia  they  ruled  their 
world. 

Of  literary  or  artistic  society  at  Lady  Palmerston's  Saturdays 
there  were  scarcely  any  representatives  ;  indeed,  Dicky  Doyle, 
and  Monckton  Milnes,  afterwards  Lord  Houghton,  were  almost 
alone.  Lord  Lytton  was  there,  but  rather  like  Macaulay,  because  he 
was  a  statesman,  than  on  account  of  his  success  in  Letters.  And 
yet  there  were  great  men  at  that  time — Carlyle,  Thackeray,  and 
Dickens,  Tennyson  and  Browning,  were  the  kings  of  book-land,  but 
they  had  to  be  sought  elsewhere.  Little  Holland  House,  where  the 
Prinseps  and  Watts  ruled  the  roast,  was  a  better  covert  to  draw 
for  the  priests  of  Apollo  and  the  Muses  than  Cambridge 
House. 

Another  lady  whose  salon  in  Carlton  Gardens  was  famous,  was 
Frances,  Lady  Waldegrave.  Her  theatricals  and  her  gatherings 
attracted  the  best  of  London.  She  was  a  capital  actress,  and 
always  managed  to  collect  a  good  company  in  support  of  her  own 
talent.  Her  brother,  Mr.  Braham,  was  stage  manager.  I  was  the 


128  Memories. 

jeune  premier.  At  Strawberry  Hill  she  gave  delightful,  almost 
historic  dinners,  which  often  ended  in  being  moonlit  garden  parties, 
where  the  guests  would  wander  in  a  midsummer  night's  dream, 
until  the  first  glimmer  of  dawn  reminded  them  that  they  were  some 
miles  from  home  and  that  even  fairies  must  be  flitting  back  from  the 
poetry  of  flirtation  under  the  stars  to  the  prose  of  daylight. 

There  can  be  few  matters  in  which  custom,  or  fashion,  has  veered 
round  more  completely  than  it  has  done  in  the  matter  of  tobacco 
during  my  life-time.  The  Foreign  Office  was  when  I  entered  it  the 
only  public  department  in  which  smoking  was  allowed.  That  was 
a  legacy  from  Lord  Clarendon,  who,  an  inveterate  smoker  himself, 
was  far  too  kindly  to  inflict  upon  his  subordinates  what  would  have 
been  a  cruel  privation  to  himself,  so  we  smoked  at  our  work,  but  the 
other  departments,  and  the  public  in  general,  looked  rather  askance 
upon  us  for  the  privilege,  for  smoking  was  considered  to  be  the 
outward  and  visible  sign  of  idleness  and  incompetence.  Smoking 
in  the  streets  or  in  the  Park  was  a  thing  not  to  be  dreamt  of.  To 
carry  a  cigar  in  Pall  Mall  or  St.  James's  Street  would  have  caused  a 
man  to  be  classed  as  "  an  unredeemed  cad." 

Bulwer's  "  My  Novel  "  is  not  much  read  now,  I  fancy,  and  more's 
the  pity,  for  it  gives  a  rare  picture  of  what  it  calls  in  its  sub-title  the 
"  varieties  in  English  life  "  during  the  early  fifties.  It  was  published 
in  1852.  Harley  L'Estrange,  coming  back  from  abroad,  goes  for  a 
stroll  with  his  dog  in  Hyde  Park  in  the  evening.  He  throws  himself 
upon  a  bench  under  a  tree.  "  '  Half-past  eight/  said  he,  looking  at 
his  watch,  '  one  may  smoke  one's  cigar  without  shocking  the  world. 
It  is  the  most  barefaced  lie  in  the  world,  my  Nero,'  said  he, 
addressing  his  dog,  '  this  boasted  liberty  of  man  !  Now  here  am  I, 
a  freeborn  Englishman,  a  citizen  of  the  world,  caring — I  often  say 
to  myself — caring  not  a  jot  for  Kaiser  or  mob  ;  and  yet  I  no  more  dare 
smoke  this  cigar  in  the  Park  at  half-past  six,  when  all  the  world  is 
abroad,  than  I  dare  pick  my  Lord  Chancellor's  pocket,  or  hit  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  a  thump  on  the  nose.'  '  So  much  for 
smoking  in  London.  In  country  houses  we  were  badly  off  indeed. 
When  the  ladies  left  the  drawing-room,  the  men  who  wished  to 
smoke  were  sent  down  to  the  kitchen  or  the  servants'  hall,  to  fight 
the  rival  perfumes  of  beer,  tepid  beef,  cheese  and  onions. 


The  F.  O.  129 

The  banishment  of  cigars  from  the  statelier  rooms  once  led  to 
my  turning  a  chance  acquaintance  into  something  like  a  friendship. 
Sir  William  Middleton,  a  grand  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  gave  a 
party  at  his  beautiful  place,  Shrubland,  in  Suffolk,  in  honour  of 
the  Duke  and  Duchess  d'Aumale.  The  gardens  were  exquisitely 
beautiful,  the  house  comfort  itself,  the  cook  an  artist  of  high  repute, 
but  there  was  no  smoking-room.  The  Duke  was  a  confirmed 
smoker,  and,  strange  to  say,  I  alone  in  all  that  large  party  was  able 
to  keep  him  company.  We  were  sent  off — not  to  the  kitchen,  for 
in  his  case  that  would  never  have  done — but  to  some  remote 
turret,  whence  it  was  hoped  that  no  noxious  fumes  might  penetrate 
the  rest  of  the  house,  and  there  we  sat  and  smoked  till  the  small 
hours. 

The  Duke  was  the  best  of  company,  telling  stories  of  his  old 
campaigns  against  Abd  el  Kader  in  Algeria  and  humming  snatches 
of  the  songs  with  which  the  piou-pious  were  wont  to  enliven  the 
night  round  the  camp-fire.  He  had  all  the  verve  and  dash  of  the 
French  soldier,  combined  with  vast  stores  of  learning  and  a  fund 
of  ready  wit.  How  the  French  army  loved  him  !  How  they  de- 
lighted in  his  esprit  Gaulois  !  How  they  revelled  in  the  story  of 
his  marching  through  Burgundy,  and  coming  to  a  vineclad  slope, 
asking  what  vineyard  it  was.  "  The  Clos  de  Vougeot  "  was  the 
answer.  Out  rang  the  word  of  command  :  "  Halt !  Front ! 
Present  arms  !  "  Had  the  Due  d'Aumale  been  the  eldest  son  of 
Louis  Philippe,  it  might  have  made  a  difference  in  the  history  of 
France. 

Sir  William  Middleton  was  a  great  character,  famous  for  his 
gardens,  in  days  when  gardening  was  less  the  fashion  than  it  is  now, 
and  for  his  wigs,  innocent  frauds  which  deceived  no  one,  except, 
perhaps,  himself.  He  had  a  wig  for  every  day  of  the  month  gradu- 
ated in  length.  On  the  3ist  of  the  month  he  went  into  Ipswich 
wearing  the  longest  wig  and  came  out  again  wearing  the  shortest — 
he  had  been  to  have  his  hair  cut.  One  night  there  was  a  great 
dinner  at  Sir  Anthony  de  Rothschild's  "  to  have  the  honour  of 
meeting  "  a  royal  personage.  It  was  a  man's  dinner,  and  Sir 
William  Middleton  was  sitting  next  to  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne,  who  was 
as  bald  as  a  billiard-ball.  In  handing  round  some  dish  one  of  the 
VOL.  i  9 


130  Memories 

gorgeously-liveried  footmen  caught  Sir  William's  wig  in  his  aiguil- 
lette  or  a  button  :  off  came  the  wig.  The  unhappy  footman  lost 
his  wits,  and  seeing  two  bald  heads,  crammed  down  the  wig  on  the 
wrong  one.  B.  O.,  as  he  was  affectionately  called,  was  delighted, 
and  roared  with  laughter.  To  Sir  William  it  was  a  tragedy. 


CHAPTER    VII 

1861 

LORD   LYONS 

TOWARDS  the  end  of  November,  1861,  there  was  a  moment 
when  it  seemed  as  if  a  war  between  England  and  the  United 
States  was  inevitable.  By  the  prudence  and  tact  of  one  man  that 
dire  calamity  was  averted.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  any 
diplomatist  ever  rendered  greater  service  to  his  country  than  Lord 
Lyons  did  at  that  time.  The  part  which  he  had  to  play  would  have 
been  delicate  in  any  circumstances,  but  in  his  case  the  difficulties 
were  accentuated  by  the  fact  that  on  one  side  of  the  Atlantic  he  was 
instructed  by  Lord  John  Russell,  a  minister  who  seemed  to  delight 
in  giving  offence,  while  on  the  other  side  he  had  to  deal  with  Mr. 
Seward,  a  Secretary  of  State  who  was  never  conciliatory  and  who 
introduced  into  diplomatic  argument  something  of  the  bullying 
manner  of  a  nisi  prius  lawyer. 

Lord  Lyons  was  blessed  with  a  gift  of  inexhaustible  patience 
and  perfect  temper,  which  throughout  the  negotiations  on  the 
famous  "  Trent  "  affair  won  for  him  the  gratitude  of  all  Englishmen 
and  the  respect  of  his  formidable  adversary.  Personally  I  had  the 
greatest  admiration  for  Lord  Lyons,  and  welcomed  the  story  of  his 
life  so  admirably  told  by  Lord  Newton.  In  private  life  Lord  Lyons 
was  charming.  His  quiet  and  subtle  humour  gave  a  zest  to  his 
conversation  :  "'  When  shall  you  be  taking  a  holiday  and  coming 
over  to  England  ?  "  I  asked  him  once  at  Paris.  "  I'm  sure  I  don't 
know,"  he  answered,  in  his  dry  way,  with  a  little  familiar  twinkle  in 
his  eye,  "  but  I've  told  Salisbury  that  I  really  can't  wait  for  the 
settlement  of  the  Oriental  question."  At  the  age  of  ninety-eight 
VOL.  i  131  9* 


132  Memories 

he  would  have  been  still  waiting  to-day  !  His  old-fashioned  courtesy 
had  a  charm  which  was  quite  characteristic ;  Lord  Chesterfield 
himself  could  not  have  been  more  of  a  grand  seigneur. 

When  Lord  Newton's  life  came  out,  I,  full  of  respect  for  one  of  our 
great  chiefs  in  the  diplomatic  service,  wrote  a  notice  of  the  book  for 
the  Candid  Review.  My  excuse  for  reproducing  it  here  is  that  it 
recounts  some  of  the  most  memorable  events  which  took  place 
during  my  diplomatic  days — it  also  incidentally  alludes  to  some  of 
the  chiefs  whom  I  knew  well.  Could  I  do  better  in  honour  of  Lord 
Lyons,  I  would. 

The  old  diplomacy  is  as  dead  as  Queen  Anne,  but  unlike  Queen 
Anne,  without  any  hope  of  resurrection.  Like  many  other  old 
institutions,  it  has  been  killed  by  the  nineteenth  century  and  its 
inventions.  The  position  of  an  Ambassador  is  still  one  of  great 
dignity,  and  he  can  help  largely  to  keep  up  the  prestige  and  authority 
of  the  nation  which  he  represents.  He  is  consulted,  and,  if  the 
Government  are  wise,  listened  to,  but  in  the  determination  of  policy 
his  initiative  has  been  strangled.  He  is  so  far  as  that  is  concerned 
little  more  than  a  clerk  at  one  end  of  a  telegraph-wire,  whose  duty 
it  is  to  carry  out  the  instructions  of  Downing  Street  with  as  much 
exercise  of  power  of  conciliation  as  may  be. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  a  situation  so  sudden,  so  unfore- 
seen, that  it  would  not  be  the  duty  of  the  Ambassador  to  abstain 
from  any  move  without  having  first  consulted  the  Secretary  of 
State  and  the  Home  Government.  Whether  this  is  altogether  an 
advantage  is  open  to  grave  doubt.  In  the  warp  and  woof  of  com- 
plicated and  delicate  negotiations,  there  are  often  intricacies  and 
slight  shades  of  which  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  com- 
municate the  full  importance  in  writing,  still  more  by  telegraphy,  but 
which  the  "  man  on  the  spot,"  if  he  be  worth  his  salt,  can  turn  to 
account.  In  the  interchange  of  views  between  negotiators,  "  c'est 
le  ton  qui  fait  la  musique,"  and  it  is  precisely  the  fine  subtleties 
of  the  gamut  the  reality  of  which  it  is  so  difficult  to  convey  by 
correspondence. 

It  not  seldom  happens  that  the  man  at  the  other  end  of  the  wire, 
though  he  may  be  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  brutal  facts 


Lord  Lyons  133 

under  discussion,  may,  for  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  temper  of  a 
minister  and  of  the  peculiar  pressure  which  at  a  given  moment  is 
being  brought  to  bear  upon  him  by  the  internal  politics  of  the 
country  which  he  represents,  be  inclined  to  some  move  which  the 
astute  agent,  wary  and  watchful,  would  easily  avoid,  by  smoothing 
difficulties  and  counterchecking  dangerous  arguments. 

It  is  difficult  in  these  days  to  realize  the  initiative  power  exercised 
ty  some  of  the  older  diplomatists.  A  Russianized  Pozzo  di  Borgo 
forces  on  an  alliance  between  Austria  and  the  country  which  employs 
him  for  the  annihilation  of  a  brother  Corsican.  A  Stratford  de 
Redcliffe,  in  the  execution  of  a  policy  of  which  his  own  government 
hardly  conceals  its  hatred,  plunges  five  great  nations  in  war.  Such 
masterful  agents  as  these  are  unthinkable  to-day.  Not  much  more 
astonished  would  the  world  be  by  the  dispatches  of  ministers  ac- 
credited to  the  long  since  defunct  small  German  and  Italian  Grand 
Ducal  Courts — proud  records  of  august  handshakes  prolonged 
beyond  those  accorded  to  rival  plenipotentiaries,  chronicles  of 
snarlings  and  bickerings  over  some  vital  question  of  precedence  at 
a  Court  supper  or  dinner. 

These  were  subjects  upon  which  the  lesser  men  expatiated  in 
deadly  earnest,  deeply  penetrated  with  a  sense  of  their  importance 
— and  yet  they  were  not  altogether  without  their  value,  for  we 
owe  them  some  measure  of  grateful  respect,  since  the  judicious 
handling  of  such  twaddle  occasionally  brought  to  light  the  talents 
of  a  man  fitted  for  the  nice  conduct  of  real  affairs.  Indeed  it 
was  such  a  case  that  first  gave  the  Foreign  Office  an  inkling  of 
the  worth  of  a  man  who  in  the  story  of  later  years  was  destined  to 
play  a  dominant  part,  the  importance  of  which  not  even  his  ex- 
cessive modesty  and  self-effacement  could  keep  altogether  in 
the  background. 

There  is  little  need  to  call  Dr.  Johnson  into  court  to  prove  that 
"  nobody  can  write  the  life  of  a  man,  but  those  who  have  eat  (sic) 
and  drunk  and  lived  in  social  intercourse  with  him."  Lord  Lyons 
has  been  lucky  in  having  such  a  biographer  as  Lord  Newton,  who 
not  only  had  daily  social  intercourse  with  him,  "  eating  and  drink- 
ing with  him  "  for  some  years,  but  being  moreover  a  man  of  his 
own  profession  and  his  intimate  subordinate,  though  at  the  time 


134  Memories 

when  they  were  together  only  a  brilliant  youngster,  had  something 
more  than  the  ordinary  opportunities  of  estimating  his  chief's 
public  worth.  Lord  Newton  is,  as  the  House  of  Lords  well  knows, 
a  master  of  subtle  humour  and  delicate  irony ;  he  writes  excellent 
English — terse,  bright  and  to  the  point ;  and  with  these  qualifi- 
cations it  is  no  wonder  that  he  has  produced  a  book,  which,  seeing 
the  momentously  important  events  in  which  Lord  Lyons  took  a 
leading  part,  must  be  largely  consulted  in  all  attempts  to  write 
the  history  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

I  use  the  words  "  leading  part  "  advisedly  ;  for  Lord  Lyons  was 
essentially  a  leader,  guide,  and  instructor,  upon  whose  wisdom 
those  who  had  the  ultimate  decision  of  affairs  were  able  to  lean 
with  confidence.  For  the  relation  of  intricate  negotiations,  Lord 
Newton  has  been  happily  documented  with  material  that  is  en- 
tirely new  and  unpublished.  The  word  "  intricate  "  need  scare 
no  reader,  for  he  has  marshalled  his  facts  so  skilfully  that  much 
which  might  have  been  obscure  is  crystal-clear. 

The  great  Lord  Lyons — for  he  was  great — was  born  in  1817, 
the  son  of  that  famous  old  sea-dog  and  diplomatist,  Admiral  Sir 
Edmund  Lyons,  afterwards  the  first  Lord  Lyons.  Like  his  younger 
brother,  he  was  sent  to  sea  when  he  was  little  more  than  a  child 
— only  ten  years  old.  But  he  was  quite  unfitted  for  a  sailor's 
life ;  he  was  a  martyr  to  sea-sickness,  which  he  never  got  over, 
and  so,  as  Lord  Newton  says,  "  it  was  probably  with  no  slight 
satisfaction  that  the  navy  was  exchanged  for  Winchester."  But 
it  is  a  coincidence  worthy  of  note  that  the  two  diplomatic  achieve- 
ments which  chiefly  made  him  famous  were,  as  we  shall  presently 
see,  both  of  them  connected  with  the  sea  and  shipping  and  maritime 
law. 

One  would  have  liked  to  have  had  some  knowledge  of  his  early 
days,  for  the  childhood  that  was  to  father  a  man  of  so  marked  a 
personality  could  not  have  been  without  interest,  but  upon  this 
point  his  biographer  is  silent ;  indeed,  a  bare  page  and  a  half  is 
all  that  is  devoted  to  transferring  him  from  Winchester  to  Christ- 
church,  where  he  took  his  degree  in  1838,  and  to  the  thirteen  years 
during  which  he  was  eating  out  his  heart  as  an  attache  at  Athens 
(where  his  father,  the  Admiral,  was  minister),  despairing  of  pro- 


Lord  Lyons  135 

motion  and  half-minded  to  leave  a  profession  in  which  he  was 
destined  to  be  so  distinguished  a  figure. 

In  1853  we  find  him  at  Rome,  a  post  of  some  importance,  though, 
as  England  had  no  diplomatic  relations  with  the  Vatican,  it  was 
always  filled  by  an  official  of  no  higher  rank  than  one  of  the  Secre- 
taries of  Legation  at  Florence,  and  afterwards  at  the  Italian  Court 
when  it  was  at  Turin,  and  later  transferred  to  Florence.  It  was 
a  post  which  needed  no  little  skill  and  tact,  and  was  later  occupied 
with  conspicuous  ability  by  Lord  Odo  Russell  (Lord  Ampthill). 

Lord  Lyons'  experience  showed,  as  he  himself  wrote,  that  "  in 
spite  of  my  peculiar  position,  notwithstanding  a  very  strong 
opinion  to  the  contrary,  at  Rome,  as  at  most  other  places,  one 
succeeds  best  by  transacting  one's  business  in  the  most  plain  and 
straightforward  manner,  and  through  the  most  direct  channels. 
By  acting  on  this  principle  and  by  being  very  quiet  and  unobtrusive, 
I  think  I  have  in  part  allayed  the  suspicions  which  are  felt  towards 
us  always  more  or  less  at  Rome,  and  I  am  certainly  on  a  better 
footing  with  Cardinal  Antonelli  than  I  had  at  all  expected  to  be  " 

This  saying  of  his — uttered  at  the  very  beginning  of  his  first 
experience  of  an  independent  post — is  worth  quoting,  for  it  gives 
us  the  keynote  of  his  whole  diplomatic  career,  and  reveals  the 
secret  of  the  success  which  he  achieved  when  he  was  afterwards 
placed  in  positions  as  difficult  and  as  delicate  as  any  that  a  diplo- 
matist was  ever  called  upon  to  face. 

Four  years  later  Lord  Lyons  was  called  upon  to  settle  "  one 
of  those  trivial  questions  which  so  deeply  exercised  the  diplomacy 
of  a  former  generation  " — a  question,  indeed,  which  it  is  nowadays 
difficult  to  imagine  occurring  outside  of  the  Court  of  the  Grand 
Duchess  of  Gerolstein.  Lord  Normanby,  K.G.,  Ex-Viceroy  of 
Ireland,  was  British  Minister  at  Florence,  and  had  gone  on  leave, 
furious,  in  circumstances  which  were  grave  indeed. 

The  Pope  having  visited  Florence,  a  banquet  in  his  honour 
had  been  given  by  the  Grand  Duke,  and  the  diplomatic  body 
were  invited ;  but  to  their  great  indignation  they  were  not  seated 
at  the  Tavola  di  Stato,  the  sovereign  table.  Lord  Normanby 
demanded  an  apology,  and  the  chers  collogues  having  agreed  to 
support  him,  backed  out  at  the  last  moment ;  so  Lord  Normanby 


136  Memories 

went  off  fuming  and  fussing,  and  "  uttering  dark  threats  that  he 
would  not  return  unless  the  apology  was  forthcoming."  Mr. 
Lyons  was  summoned  from  Rome  to  act  as  charge  d'affaires,  and 
upon  him  fell  the  task  of  making  the  Tuscan  Government  apolo- 
gize. For  three  weary  months  a  correspondence  at  which  so 
essentially  practical  a  man  as  Lyons,  with  his  subtle  sense  of 
humour,  must  have  laughed  in  his  sleeve,  used  up  reams  of  paper, 
until  at  last,  after  "  a  severe  rebuke  "  from  Lord  Clarendon,  the 
Tuscan  Government  ate  some  infinitesimal  particle  of  dirt,  "  the 
injured  Lord  Normanby  returned  to  his  post,  and  Lyons  resumed 
his  duties  at  Rome."  For  the  full  enjoyment  of  Lord  Newton's 
account  of  the  episode  it  is  almost  necessary  to  have  known  the 
two  men  as  I  did — the  Turveydrop-like  pomposity  of  the  one,  and 
the  simple  sober  dignity  of  the  other,  gifted  with  the  most  delicate 
feeling  for  proportion. 

It  was  hi  March,  1858,  that  Lord  Lyons  had  his  first  great 
opportunity.  Diplomatic  relations  with  Naples  having  been 
broken  off  for  some  years,  Mr.  Lyons  received  orders  from  Lord 
Malmesbury  to  proceed  to  Naples  to  inquire  into  the  case  of  the 
Cagliari.  It  was  a  difficult  matter  and  created  a  great  excitement 
at  the  time. 

The  Cagliari  was  a  mail  steamer  plying  between  Genoa,  Sardinia 
and  Tunis,  and  on  25th  June,  1857,  "  a  number  of  Mazzinians 
who  had  taken  passage  hi  her,  seized  the  master  and  crew,  altered 
the  course  of  the  vessel,  landed  at  the  Island  of  Ponza  in  Nea- 
politan territory,  where  they  liberated  three  hundred  political 
prisoners,  and  subsequently  proceeded  to  Sapri,  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Salerno.  Here  they  again  disembarked,  expecting  the 
inhabitants  to  rise  in  their  favour,  but  encountered  a  superior 
force  of  Neapolitan  troops,  who  killed  or  captured  the  whole  party, 
while  the  Cagliari  was  seized  by  Neapolitan  warships  as  she  was 
making  her  way  ostensibly  to  Naples.  Some  weeks  later  it  was 
ascertained  that  among  the  prisoners  in  Naples  were  two  English 
engineers,  Watt  and  Park  by  name,  and  it  was  stated  that  these 
two  men  were  entirely  ignorant  of  the  conspiracy,  and  had  been 
forced  by  the  conspirators  to  work  the  engines  under  threats  of 
being  summarily  shot  if  they  refused." 


Lord  Lyons  137 

Naturally  the  British  Government  demanded  that  these  two 
men  should  at  least  have  fair  trial,  and  Lord  Clarendon,  then 
Foreign  Minister,  there  being  no  Legation  at  Naples,  wrote  per- 
sonally to  Signer  Carafa,  the  Neapolitan  Foreign  Minister,  on 
their  behalf ;  but  the  Neapolitan  Government  shuffled  and  de- 
layed, and  in  March,  1858,  the  two  men  were  still  in  prison,  where 
owing  to  cruel  treatment  after  the  manner  of  the  Naples  of  those 
days,  "  the  health  of  both  was  completely  broken  down,  and  Watt 
had  become  partially  insane."  It  was  hi  these  circumstances 
that,  Lord  Malmesbury  having  succeeded  Lord  Clarendon  at  the 
Foreign  Office,  Mr.  Lyons  was  ordered  to  proceed  to  Naples  to 
investigate  the  case.  He  was  successful.  The  two  Englishmen 
were  released,  and  after  further  negotiations  an  indemnity  of 
£3,000  was  paid  to  Watt  and  Park,  and  finally  the  Cagliari  was 
placed  at  Mr.  Lyons'  disposal. 

The  question  had  been  complicated  by  our  relations  with  Sar- 
dinia, and  Lyons  had  been  ordered  to  use  threats  of  our  making 
common  cause  with  that  Power  against  Naples  should  his  demands 
be  refused  ;  but  as  Lord  Newton  points  out,  it  was  an  additional 
satisfaction  for  Lyons  to  be  able  to  say,  "  Far  from  threatening, 
I  did  not  even  go  so  far  as  my  instructions  warranted,  for  I  did 
not  say  that  His  Majesty's  Government  proposed  that  the  mediator 
should  retire  at  the  end  of  three  months,  nor  did  I  tell  Signor 
Carafa  that  I  was  myself  ordered  to  go  back  to  Rome  if  the 
mediation  should  be  refused  at  the  expiration  of  ten  days." 

The  same  methods  of  suave  and  gentle  persuasion  which  an- 
swered so  well  in  this  case  were  to  be  the  secret  of  his  success  a 
few  years  later  in  another  hemisphere  and  in  far  more  critical  cir- 
cumstances. The  conduct  of  the  Cagliari  case  resulted  in  his 
being  appointed  Minister  at  Florence,  and  in  the  following 
November  (1858)  "  came  the  offer  of  the  Washington  Legation, 
an  offer  which,  with  characteristic  modesty,  he  accepted  with 
considerable  misgivings  as  to  his  competence."  It  was  a  good 
thing  for  England  that  any  such  scruples  as  he  may  have  enter- 
tained were  overcome.  His  mission  to  Washington  was  big  with 
fate.  In  the  same  month  his  father  died  and  he  succeeded  to 
the  peerage. 


138  Memories 

In  February,  1859,  Lord  Lyons  sailed  for  Washington  in  H.M.S. 
Curafao.  In  these  times  of  huge  liners  and  rapid  passages,  with 
the  possibility  already  in  view  of  still  swifter  crossings  of  the 
Atlantic  in  airships,  it  is  startling  to  read  of  a  voyage  which  occu- 
pied forty-two  days,  "  a  period  which  must  have  been  singularly 
disagreeable  to  a  man  who,  in  spite  of  some  years'  naval  service, 
always  suffered  from  sea-sickness." 

It  was  no  doubt  something  of  a  relief  to  Lord  Lyons  to  meet 
with  a  most  courteous  reception  when  he  presented  his  credentials 
to  Mr.  Buchanan,  the  then  President  of  the  United  States,  for  he 
might  well  have  anticipated  that,  at  any  rate  at  first,  the  Lega- 
tion at  Washington  would  not  be  a  bed  of  roses.  He  had  to  take 
up  the  succession  of  Sir  John  Crampton,  a  diplomatist  who,  though, 
first  as  secretary  of  Legation  and  afterwards  as  minister,  he  had 
served  for  a  good  many  years  at  Washington,  had  never  suc- 
ceeded in  making  himself  popular  with  the  United  States 
authorities. 

There  had  been  much  ill-feeling  between  the  two  countries  on 
account  of  enlistments  for  foreign  legions  at  the  time  of  the  Crimean 
War ;  Crampton,  who  did  not  realize  the  susceptibilities  of  the 
Americans,  had  been  very  active  in  this  recruiting  scheme,  and 
matters  had  reached  a  point  of  such  tension  that  in  May,  1856, 
President  Pierce  broke  off  relations  with  Crampton,  who  had  to 
return  home. 

Things  had  more  or  less  quieted  down  in  the  meantime,  but 
in  December,  1858,  a  Presidential  message  containing  "  some 
rather  ominous  passages  with  regard  to  the  relations  between 
England  and  the  United  States "  was  delivered.  There  were 
at  the  time  not  a  few  signs  of  underground  forces  at  work  which 
might  at  any  moment  break  out  into  open  eruption.  Lord  Lyons 
would  have  been  superhuman  if  he  had  not  felt  some  emotion  at 
entering  upon  duties  which  must  manifestly  be  fraught  with  un- 
usual difficulties ;  still,  "  the  sentiments  now  expressed  were 
friendly  in  character  and  showed  a  disposition  to  settle  pending 
difficulties  in  an  amicable  spirit."  Statesmen  so  minded,  and 
animated  by  this  conciliatory  feeling,  might  reckon  upon  being 
wholeheartedly  seconded  by  the  new  minister. 


Lord  Lyons  139 

For  a  year  or  two  Lord  Lyons  had  no  very  crucial  question  to 
face.  The  San  Juan  "  difficulty,"  in  which  the  United  States 
Government  showed  the  most  conciliatory  temper,  and  the 
question  of  the  possible  absorption  of  Mexico  by  the  United  States, 
in  which  Great  Britain  had  no  more  than  a  philanthropic  concern 
inspired  by  the  feeling  that  it  would  have  threatened  the  exten- 
sion of  slavery,  could  hardly  be  reckoned  as  coming  under  such 
a  category. 

In  the  meantime,  hi  such  negotiations  as  he  had  to  conduct,  his 
conciliatory  and  unobtrusive  policy,  his  great  discretion,  had 
won  for  him  golden  opinions  and  much  respect  among  all  classes 
of  American  politicians  ;  that,  together  with  the  popularity  which 
the  Prince  of  Wales  never  failed  to  gain  and  which  was  a  con- 
spicuous result  of  His  Royal  Highness's  visit  to  Canada  and  the 
United  States  in  1860,  happily  placed  the  relations  between  the 
two  countries  on  such  a  footing  as  had  probably  never  existed 
since  the  separation.  The  value  of  this  was  felt  when  the  great 
strain  came.  In  1861,  Mr.  Buchanan  had  faded  into  that  Stygian 
darkness  in  which  ex-presidents  of  the  United  States  flit  as 
phantoms  of  a  past  dignity. 

Abraham  Lincoln  ruled  in  his  stead — Abraham  Lincoln,  tree- 
feller,  rail-splitter,  village  postman,  and  one  of  the  greatest  men 
that  ever  made  history. 

This  tall,  gaunt,  raw-boned,  lantern-jawed  man,  fresh  caught 
from  Illinois,  with  none  of  the  graces  which  the  gods  have  given, 
save  that  supreme  grace  of  truth  and  pellucid  honesty  which 
sweetens  all  intercourse,  would  have  been  an  easy  man  for  a 
minister  like  Lord  Lyons,  himself  the  very  incarnation  of  trans- 
parent sincerity,  to  deal  with.  His  Secretary  of  State,  Mr.  H. 
Seward,  was  a  man  of  another  kidney.  Mr.  Seward  was  a  New 
York  lawyer,  a  rough,  coarse,  unconciliatory  nature,  one  of  those 
impossible  people  who  mistake  bluster  for  courage,  and  braggadocio 
for  strength — so  unmannerly  was  he  that  on  one  occasion  when 
he  was  a  guest  at  a  dinner-party  at  the  British  Legation,  he 
talked  so  offensively  to  certain  of  the  diplomatists  present  that 
Lord  Lyons,  a  past-master  in  the  art  of  turning  a  sharp  corner, 
broke  up  the  conversation  by  saying  that  as  host  it  was  now  his 


140  Memories 

duty  to  go  and  talk  to  the  ladies.  It  needed  all  the  tact,  patience 
and  self-control  of  Lord  Lyons  to  treat  with  such  a  man.  That 
he  succeeded  hi  taming  him  into  something  approaching  to  the 
amenities — I  had  almost  written  the  decencies — of  diplomatic 
intercourse,  was  one  of  Lord  Lyons'  most  notable  achieve- 
ments. 

In  1860  the  United  States  were  on  the  brink  of  a  volcano.  The 
secession  of  the  Southern  States  was  imminent,  and  on  the  loth  of 
December  Lord  Lyons  wrote  to  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  :  "  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  I  am  in  the  same  country  which  appeared 
so  prosperous,  so  contented,  and  one  may  say  so  calm  when  we 
travelled  through  it.  ...  Our  friends  are  apparently  going  ahead 
on  the  road  to  ruin  with  their  characteristic  speed  and  energy. 
The  President  [Buchanan]  is  harassed  beyond  measure." 

Lincoln  was  inaugurated  as  President  in  March,  1861,  and  in 
the  following  April  the  dogs  of  war  were  let  loose  with  a  vengeance, 
"  and  the  capture  of  Fort  Sumter  [by  the  Confederates]  signalized 
the  fact  that  a  population  of  little  over  five  millions  of  white  men 
had  had  the  audacity  to  challenge  over  twenty-two  millions  of 
their  fellow-countrymen."  The  blockade  of  the  southern  ports 
became  all  important  for  England.  Lord  Lyons,  writing  to  Lord 
John  Russell,  said  :  "  If  the  United  States  are  to  be  permitted 
to  seize  any  ship  of  ours  wherever  they  can  find  her  under  their 
jurisdiction  on  the  plea  that  by  going  to  a  southern  port  she  has 
violated  the  U.  S.  Customs  Laws,  our  commerce  will  be  exposed 
to  vexations  beyond  bearing,  and  all  kinds  of  new  and  doubtful 
questions  will  be  raised.  In  fact,  this,  it  seems  to  me,  would  be  a 
paper  blockade  of  the  worst  kind.  It  would  certainly  justify 
Great  Britain  and  France  in  recognizing  the  Southern  Confederacy, 
and  sending  their  fleets  to  force  the  U.  S.  to  treat  British  and 
French  vessels  as  neutrals  in  conformity  with  the  law  of  nations." 
Mr.  Seward  was  apparently  convinced  of  the  reality  of  this  danger, 
but  when  he  saw  how  violent  the  President  and  his  colleagues  were, 
veered  round  and  became  "  the  fiercest  of  the  lot."  Lord  Lyons 
went  on  to  say,  "  I  am  in  constant  apprehension  of  some  foolish 
and  violent  proceeding  of  the  Government  with  regard  to  Foreign 
Powers.  Neither  the  President  nor  any  man  in  the  Cabinet  has  a 


Lord  Lyons  141 

knowledge  of  foreign  affairs ;  they  have  consequently  all  the 
overwhelming  confidence  in  their  own  strength  which  popular 
oratory  has  made  common  in  this  country." 

The  position  of  the  British  Minister  at  Washington  was  one  of 
supreme  difficulty.  The  Government  had  wisely  made  common 
cause  with  France,  but  no  clear  instructions  as  to  procedure  had 
been  issued  to  Lord  Lyons, — Lord  John  Russell  contenting  himself 
with  saying  that  he  relied  upon  "  the  wisdom,  patience  and  prudence 
of  the  British  Minister  to  steer  safely  through  the  danger  of  the 
crisis."  The  Law  Officers  of  the  Crown  gave  it  as  their  opinion 
"  that  we  must  consider  the  civil  war  in  America  as  regular  war — 
justum  bellum — and  must  apply  to  it  all  the  rules  respecting  blockade 
and  letters  of  marque,  which  belong  to  neutrals  during  a  war." 
They  went  on  to  express  a  pious  wish  that  both  parties  should 
agree  to  the  Declaration  of  Paris  regarding  the  flag  covering  the 
goods  and  the  prohibition  of  privateers. 

Pious  wishes  do  not  always  bear  fruit,  and  seeing  the  vital 
importance  to  England,  and  especially  to  Lancashire,  of  trade  with 
the  Southern  States,  it  was  evident  that  blockade  running  would 
soon  become  a  common  practice,  and,  seeing  how  ineffectual  that 
blockade  was,  would  be  resorted  to  with  the  result  that  considerable 
fortunes  would  be  amassed  by  it. 

Matters  were  not  made  easier  by  the  negotiations  which  were 
taking  place  at  home  between  Lord  John  and  Mr.  Adams, 
the  new  American  Minister,  who  had  succeeded  Mr.  Dallas.  Mr. 
Adams  said  that  the  language  held  by  Lord  John  to  his  predecessor 
had  given  umbrage  in  the  United  States,  and  might  even  lead  to 
the  termination  of  his  own  mission  unless  the  unfavourable  im- 
pression should  be  corrected.  He  complained,  moreover,  of  the 
recognition  of  the  South  as  a  belligerent.  Lord  Newton  very 
justly  points  out  that  Lord  John  Russell  was  honest  in  his  en- 
deavours to  show  that  England,  as  a  whole,  was  in  sympathy  with 
the  North — popular  feeling  was  naturally  all  on  the  side  of  the 
abolition  of  slavery.  The  ovation  which  Mrs.  Beecher  Stow  re- 
ceived in  London  was  not  yet  forgotten,  and  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 
now  a  forgotten  book,  was  still  selling  by  thousands.  But  Lord 
John  Russell  as  a  negotiator  was  neither  conciliatory  nor  tactful, 


142  Memories 

and  it  was  certainly  remarkable  that  while  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic  Lord  Lyons  was  using  all  his  tact,  all  his  discretion,  both 
natural  and  trained,  to  soften  the  asperities  of  Mr.   Seward,  Mr 
Adams,  on  this  side,  was  confronted  with  the  querulous  acrimony 
of  the  English  Foreign  Minister. 

There  was,  moreover,  another  British  statesman  whose  clumsy 
activities  and  hardly  concealed  partiality  were  peculiarly  exas- 
perating to  the  men  of  the  North.  Mr.  Gladstone  never  quite 
shared  the  indignation  and  horror  with  which  slavery  was  regarded 
by  the  bulk  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  and  when,  later  in  the  con- 
flict, the  cotton  famine  and  the  attacks  of  the  American  Press  had 
alienated  many  Englishmen  from  the  North,  there  were  "  demon- 
strations of  pleasure  "  in  the  House  of  Commons  at  McClellan's 
defeat,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  declared  that  "  Jefferson  Davis  and 
the  leaders  of  the  South  have  made  an  army  ;  they  are  making, 
it  appears,  a  navy,  and  they  have  made  what  is  more  than  either, 
they  have  made  a  nation." 

Language  such  as  this,  held  at  the  moment  when  the  fortunes 
of  the  Federals  were  at  their  blackest,  could  not  but  arouse  the 
bitterest  feeling.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  apt  to  be  anything  but  happy 
when  he  dealt  with  the  susceptibilities  of  foreign  nations.  A 
passage  in  a  speech  of  his,  delivered  on  the  iyth  of  March,  1880, 
during  the  famous  Midlothian  campaign,  is  unforgettable.  I 
shall  allude  to  it  at  length  elsewhere.  His  utterances  in  regard 
to  the  War  of  Secession  in  America  were  even  more  dangerous 
than  this.  Austria  might  be  offended  by  his  insults,  but  they 
would  not,  could  not,  lead  to  open  hostilities.  But  there  were 
moments  during  the  great  contest  across  the  Atlantic  which  were 
crucial,  and  no  responsible  statesman  should  have  hampered 
friendly  negotiations,  the  object  of  which  was  to  avoid  a  fratricidal 
war  between  two  peoples  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  It  is  necessary, 
in  order  to  understand  the  difficulties  with  which  Lord  Lyons  had 
to  deal,  to  show  what  were  the  elements  of  conflict  working  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  which  he  had  to  meet  and  overcome.  That 
he  succeeded,  that  when  he  went  home  on  leave  to  consult  with 
the  Cabinet  he  was  able  to  write  to  Lord  Russell,  "  I  had  quite  an 
affectionate  parting  with  the  President  this  morning,"  was  one 


Lord  Lyons  143 

ol  those  triumphs  of  peace  of  which  the  laurels  are  greener  and 
more  fragrant  than  any  that  ever  hid  the  baldness  of  a  Caesar. 

The  course  of  the  great  War  of  Secession  is  followed  with  con- 
spicuous ability  in  Lord  Newton's  life.  It  is  impossible  to 
say  more  about  it  here  than  that  throughout  those  terrible  years 
in  which  gifts  of  the  most  consummate  tact  and  judgment  were  put 
to  the  test,  Lord  Lyons  continued  to  work  with  patriotic  patience 
and  with  such  great  restraint  that  one  is  almost  tempted  to  say 
silently  ;  indeed,  in  one  letter  to  Lord  Russell  he  himself  talks 
of  "  my  language,  or  rather  silence."  One  only  goal  was  ever 
before  his  eyes,  and  that  goal  the  prevention  of  any  cause  or  excuse 
that  might  lead  to  an  outbreak  of  hostilities  between  the  two 
countries.  I  can  go  into  no  details  here,  but  there  were  two 
episodes  in  which  his  moderating  influence  curbed  the  hot  heads 
of  both  nations. 

The  first  was  the  famous  case  of  the  Trent.  On  the  8th  of 
November,  1861,  "  the  English  mail  steamer  Trent,  one  day  out 
from  Havana,  was  met  by  the  American  warship  San  Jacinto, 
and  stopped  by  a  shell  fired  across  her  bows.  She  was  then 
boarded  by  a  party  of  marines,  and  the  officer  in  command  of  the 
party  demanded  a  list  of  the  passengers.  The  production  of  the 
list  having  been  refused,  the  officer  stated  that  he  knew  the  Con- 
federate delegates  to  Europe,  Messrs.  Mason  and  Slidell,  to  be  on 
board,  and  insisted  upon  their  surrender.  While  the  discussion 
was  in  progress,  Mr.  Slidell  made  his  appearance  and  disclosed  his 
identity.  Thereupon,  in  defiance  of  the  protests  of  the  captain 
of  the  Trent  and  of  the  Government  mail  agent,  Mr.  Slidell  and 
Mr.  Mason,  together  with  their  secretaries,  were  seized  and  carried 
off  by  force  to  the  San  Jacinto,  and  taken  as  prisoners  to  New 
York." 

When  the  news  arrived  in  England  the  excitement  and  indig- 
nation were  such  that  no  one  who  witnessed  them  will  ever  forget 
that  fever  of  wrathful  resentment.  On  the  other  side  the  less 
thoughtful  portion  of  the  American  public  worked  itself  up  into  a 
perfect  delirium  of  patriotic  enthusiasm.  Captain  Wilkes,  the 
commander  of  the  San  Jacinto,  was  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a 
national  hero  ;  banquets  were  held  in  his  honour  and  the  Governor 


144  Memories 

of  Boston  made  a  speech  in  which  he  said  "  That  there  may  be 
nothing  left  to  crown  this  exultation,  Commodore  Wilkes  fired  his 
shot  across  the  bows  of  the  ship  that  bore  the  British  lion  at  its 
head."  Promotion  to  the  rank  of  Admiral  was  the  heroic  captain's 
reward. 

Peaceful  and  conciliatory  as  Lord  Lyons  was,  and  deeply  con- 
cerned as  he  had  shown  himself  in  the  avoidance  of  giving  or  of 
unnecessarily  accepting  any  cause  of  offence,  he  was  as  convinced 
as  the  Home  Government  that  in  this  procedure  of  Captain  Wilkes 
the  limit  at  which  patience  was  possible  had  been  reached,  and  it 
must  have  been  a  relief  to  him  to  receive  the  despatch  in  which 
"  The  United  States  Government  were  informed  that  International 
Law  and  the  rights  of  Great  Britain  had  been  violated,  that  Her 
Majesty's  Government  trusted  that  the  act  would  be  disavowed, 
the  prisoners  set  free  and  restored  to  British  protection.  Should 
this  demand  be  refused,  Lord  Lyons  was  instructed  to  leave 
Washington." 

Before  the  despatch  was  sent  off,  on  the  30th  of  November, 
it  was  sent  for  approval  to  the  Queen.  Her  Majesty  was  con- 
stantly in  the  habit  of  amending  Lord  Russell's  despatches,  always 
rather  slipshod  affairs,  and  often  couched  in  offensive  language. 
She  never  did  so  with  greater  effect  than  upon  this  occasion  when, 
acting  upon  the  suggestions  of  that  most  sagacious  adviser,  the 
Prince  Consort,  written  at  a  moment  when,  as  he  himself  said, 
he  was  so  ill  that  "  he  could  hardly  hold  the  pen,"  she  so  toned 
down  such  expressions  as  might  have  wounded  the  sensitive  feel- 
ings of  the  United  States  that  the  despatch,  when  it  was  received 
by  Mr.  Seward,  raised  no  dissatisfaction,  and  that  he  "  handsomely 
acknowledged  the  great  consideration  which  had  been  shown  by 
Lord  Lyons  in  his  conduct  of  the  negotiations." 

In  their  deep  sorrow  it  must  have  been  a  happy  memory  for 
the  Queen,  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  his  brothers  and  sisters  to 
feel  that  the  last  official  act  of  the  husband  and  father  whom  they 
loved  and  venerated,  on  the  eve  of  his  entering  into  that  peace 
which  passeth  all  understanding,*  should  have  been  largely  the 
means  of  preventing  what  would  have  been  a  tragedy  indeed. 
*  The  Prince  Consort  died  on  the  I4th  December. 


Lord  Lyons  145 

It  was  a  peace  which  was   "  a  victory  no   less  renowned  than 
war." 

Mr.  Seward's  answer  to  the  British  despatch  was  a  note  "  of  the 
most  portentous  length,  abounding  in  exuberant  dialectics,  but  the 
gist  of  which  was  contained  in  the  two  following  short  paragraphs : 
'  The  four  persons  in  question  are  now  held  in  military  custody 
at  Fort  Warren,  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts.  They  will  be 
cheerfully  liberated. 

'  Your  lordship  will    please  indicate  a  time    and    place     for 
receiving  them.'  ' 

The  rest  of  the  note  might  as  well  have  been  left  unwritten. 

Messrs.  Mason  and  Slidell  were  accordingly  conveyed  in  an 
American  ship  from  Fort  Warren  to  Province  Town,  and  there 
embarked  on  a  British  warship  for  Halifax,  it  having  been  expressly 
stipulated  that  the  transfer  should  not  take  place  at  night.  From 
Halifax  they  proceeded  to  Europe. 

The  affair  ended  even  better  than  Lord  Lyons  had  hoped.  On 
the  i  gth  of  December  he  wrote  :  "I  don't  think  it  likely  they 
will  give  in,  but  I  do  not  think  it  impossible  that  they  may  do 
so  ;  "  and  to  the  very  end  he  was  preparing  for  the  worst.  All 
the  greater  must  have  been  the  relief  when,  on  the  ayth,  Mr. 
Seward's  answer  came.  "  The  Americans,"  he  writes  on  the  3ist 
of  December,  "  are  putting  the  best  face  they  can  upon  the 
surrender  of  Slidell  and  Mason,  and  as  far  as  depended  upon  me 
I  have  done  everything  to  make  the  pill  as  easy  to  swallow  as 
possible.  But  I  cannot  disguise  from  myself  that  the  real  cause 
of  the  yielding  was  nothing  more  or  less  than  the  military  prepara- 
tions made  in  England."  Coming  from  him,  these  words  sound  like 
a  warning,  profitable,  if  we  would  but  listen,  even  in  these  days. 

There  are  very  few  great  events  in  history  the  credit  for  which 
it  would  be  just  to  ascribe  to  any  one  man,  and  so  perhaps  Lord 
Newton  is  right  when  he  says  that  "  It  would  be  an  exaggeration 
to  attribute  solely  to  Lord  Lyons  the  credit  of  having  successfully 
prevented  the  calamity  of  a  war  between  England  and  the  United 
States."  Energetic  action  of  the  Home  Government,  the  wise 
moderation  of  the  Queen  and  the  Prince  Consort,  the  loyal  moral 
support  of  the  French  Government,  and  the  good  sense  of  the 

VOL.   I  10 


146  Memories 

Americans,  each  and  all  of  them  played  a  restraining  part.  But 
when  all  is  said  and  done,  it  was  to  the  extraordinary  patience  and 
delicacy  of  touch  of  Lord  Lyons,  who  never  once  made  a  mistake- 
never  under  the  most  goading  provocation  lost  his  head — that  the 
ultimate  success  of  the  negotiations  was  due. 

"  In  after  years,"  Lord  Newton  writes,  "  Lord  Lyons  frequently 
expressed  the  opinion  that  if  there  had  then  been  telegraphic 
communication  across  the  Atlantic  it  would  have  been  impossible 
to  avert  war,  and  it  is  more  than  likely  that  he  was  correct,  al- 
though it  is  improbable  that  many  people  realized  it  at  the  time." 
It  was  a  notable  case  of  a  victory  gained  by  the  man  on  the  spot. 

If  a  difficulty  of  the  most  threatening  character  had  been  con- 
jured away  there  were  soon  others  to  which  a  war  such  as  that 
which  was  raging  was  bound  to  give  birth.  Enlistment,  desertion 
and  other  pretexts  drove  scores  of  men  to  seek  protection  of  the 
consuls  both  in  the  North  and  in  the  South,  on  the  ground  of  being 
British  subjects. 

An  article  from  a  Southern  newspaper  is  worth  quoting :  "  We 
can  conceive  nothing  more  disgraceful  than  the  conduct  of  Irish- 
men, for  example,  who  have  been  cursing  the  British  Government 
ever  since  they  could  talk,  who  have  emigrated  from  their  country 
to  escape  the  British  yoke,  but  who  now  run  to  an  English  Consul 
and  profess  themselves  subjects  of  Queen  Victoria  in  order  to 
evade  their  duties  in  the  land  of  their  adoption."  That,  of  course, 
alludes  to  the  South,  but  Lord  Lyons  himself  on  nth  May,  1863, 
writes  no  less  bitterly  :  "I  have  been  unwell  for  more  than  a 
month,  and  am  beset  by  a  quantity  of  small  vexatious  business 
concerning  the  wrongs  of  the  British  subjects  who  have  suddenly 
proclaimed  their  unswerving  loyalty  to  the  British  Crown  and 
demand  my  protection." 

Also  there  was  the  Alabama  case — a  very  real  stone  of  offence 
— and  the  bitter  Anglophobia  of  Admiral  Wilkes ;  all  matters  in 
which  the  United  States  Government  behaved  generously  and 
even  magnanimously.  The  work,  however,  which  devolved  upon 
Lord  Lyons  was  stupendous ;  in  November,  1863,  he  recorded 
that  he  had  already  received  nine  hundred  notes  from  Mr.  Seward 
in  that  year.  But  there  was  one  episode  so  comic  that  it  is  diffi- 


Lord  Lyons  147 

cult  to  repress  a  smile  in  alluding  to  it.  Is  there  not  a  comedy  in 
every  tragedy  ?  Is  there  not  a  gravedigger  in  Hamlet  ? 

A  great  change  had,  during  the  last  year  or  two,  come  over  the 
terrible  Mr.  Seward.  Tamed  by  the  British  Minister,  he  was  now 
roaring  as  gently  as  any  sucking  dove,  and  would  come  to  feed  out 
of  the  hands  of  Lord  Lyons  or  M.  Mercier,  the  French  Minister, 
with  all  the  caressing  softness  of  a  pet  lamb.  In  August,  1863, 
in  a  confidential  conversation  with  Lord  Lyons,  he  expatiated 
upon  the  necessity  of  reviving  a  better  feeling  between  Great 
Britain  and  the  United  States,  and  of  making  some  demonstration 
hi  return  for  the  visit  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  before  the  war,  which 
had  been  productive  of  the  happiest  results. 

Now  it  was  the  turn  of  the  United  States  to  make  a  corresponding 
display  of  good  will,  but  it  was  difficult  to  devise  the  means  of 
doing  so,  as  the  President  could  not  travel  and  America  possessed 
no  princes.  Would  Lord  Lyons  think  the  matter  over  ?  Lord 
Lyons  could  not  see  the  necessity  for  such  a  step  ;  but  Mr.  Seward 
returned  to  the  charge,  and  Lord  Lyons,  who  was  not  slow  in  seeing 
his  object,  wrote  :  '"  The  only  conjecture  I  can  make  is  that  he 
thinks  of  going  to  England  himself.  He  may  possibly  want  to 
be  absent  for  some  reasons  connected  with  the  Presidential  contest. 
If  he  thinks  that  he  has  himself  any  chance  of  being  taken  as  a 
candidate  by  either  party  he  is  the  only  man  who  thinks  so  at 
this  moment.  It  is,  however,  generally  considered  to  be  an 
advantage  to  a  candidate  to  be  out  of  the  country  during  the 
canvass."  (In  view  of  recent  Presidential  elections  these  last 
words  are  amazing.  Times  have  changed  since  1863.)  To  think 
of  a  visit  by  Mr.  Seward,  of  all  men,  as  an  adequate  compliment 
in  exchange  for  the  Prince  of  Wales'  visit !  Needless  to  say,  that 
demonstration  did  not  take  place. 

However  conciliatory  Mr.  Seward  might  have  become,  mainly 
owing  to  the  correct  attitude  of  the  British  Government  in  detain- 
ing Confederate  ironclads  in  England,  public  feeling  in  America, 
and  even  in  certain  members  of  the  Government,  was  bitterly 
hostile.  Mr.  Wells,  who  was  Naval  Minister,  and  Mr.  Chase,  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  were  cases  in  point.  The  latter  knew 
well  that  he  was  harping  upon  a  popular  string  when  on  an 

VOL.    I  10* 


148  Memories 

electioneering  tour  he  talked  of  "  taking  old  Mother  England  by 
the  hair  and  giving  her  a  good  shaking."  Mr.  Sumner,  another 
distinguished  politician,  outdid  him  in  rancour. 

Lord  Lyons'  difficulties  and  trials  were  never  destined  to  cease 
so  long  as  he  remained  at  Washington.  For  the  details  of  these 
I  must  refer  the  reader  to  Lord  Newton's  masterly  narrative. 
In  a  mere  appreciation  such  as  this  it  is  impossible  to  do  more 
than  hint,  even  where  the  subject  tempts  the  writer  to  expatiate. 
To  add  to  his  troubles,  the  long  years  of  grinding  work  and  harass- 
ing anxieties  had  begun  to  tell  upon  the  health  of  the  Minister. 
A  trip  to  Canada  to  escape  for  a  while  from  the  great  heat  of 
Washington  could  not  restore  a  man  who  was  evidently  suffering 
from  nervous  prostration.  Lord  Lyons  felt  at  the  end  of  1864 
that  he  could  hold  out  no  longer.  It  was  not  surprising.  During 
the  year  1864  no  less  than  8,326  despatches  and  letters  were  sent 
out  by  him — mostly  drafted  by  himself,  but  in  any  case,  revised 
and  corrected  by  him.  His  attaches  and  secretaries  were  at  work 
from  nine  in  the  morning  until  seven,  without  an  interval  for 
luncheon — and  often  they  had  to  return  after  dinner  and  write 
into  the  small  hours.  That  is  the  sort  of  life  that  is  led  in  times 
of  stress  by  those  members  of  the  diplomatic  service  whom  the 
public  is  apt  to  look  upon  as  mere  dancing  dogs  !  As  I  shall  show 
later  on,  the  Legation  at  Washington  during  the  war  was  not  the 
only  theatre  of  such  work. 

Lord  Lyons  went  home  and  took  up  his  abode  with  his  sister, 
the  Duchess  of  Norfolk,  and  on  i6th  March,  1865,  he  wrote  to  Mr. 
Stuart,  the  charge  d'affaires  at  Washington  :  "  You  will  have  seen 
that  I  have  gone  out  of  the  service  altogether  and  have  become  a 
gentleman  at  large,  without  pay  or  pension.  My  health  did  not 
admit  of  my  fixing  a  time  for  going  back,  and  the  Cabinet  became 
nervous  about  leaving  Washington  without  a  Minister  in  these 
critical  times." 

Lack  of  space  forbids  me  to  reproduce  the  very  handsome  ex- 
pressions of  regret  at  Lord  Lyons'  departure  which  he  received 
both  from  Mr.  Seward  and  from  Lord  Russell.  He  had,  indeed, 
served  both  countries  well,  and  as  Lord  Newton  says  in  regard  to 
the  letter  of  the  former  :  "  It  is  satisfactory  to  realize  that  these 


Lord  Lyons  149 

two  men,  between  whom  so  many  encounters  had  taken  place, 
parted  on  terms  of  friendship  and  mutual  esteem."  They 
appreciated  one  another's  good  qualities,  and  that  Lord  Lyons 
retained  in  his  heart  a  soft  corner  for  the  rugged  New  York  lawyer 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  "  in  subsequent  communications  with 
his  own  Government  Lord  Lyons  frequently  expressed  the  hope 
that  Mr.  Seward  would  continue  to  be  responsible  for  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  American  Government." 


Rest  and  the  society  of  his  relations — the  best  of  all  restoratives 
to  a  man  of  Lord  Lyons'  affectionate  nature — in  contrast  to  the 
strenuous  labours  of  those  four  exhausting  years,  soon  effected  a 
cure.  He  was  out  of  the  service,  but  such  a  man  could  hardly  be 
spared,  and  in  the  month  of  July,  1865,  he  was  appointed  to  the 
Embassy  at  Constantinople,  in  succession  to  Sir  Henry  Bulwer 
(Lord  Dalling).  It  would  have  been  difficult  to  find  two  men  more 
different  than  Bulwer  and  Lord  Lyons. 

Bulwer  was  a  clever  curiosity,  and  a  born  intriguer.  On  leaving 
Cambridge,  he  had  been  successively  a  Greek  patriot,  a  cornet  in 
the  Life  Guards,  an  ensign  in  the  58th  Foot,  had  retired  upon 
half-pay,  had  achieved  success  as  a  gambler  and  dandy  (not  quite 
of  the  first  water),  and  finally  entered  the  diplomatic  service. 
In  appearance,  in  his  old  days,  he  was  a  small  shadow  of  a  man, 
as  wizened  as  Tithonus,  with  an  insane  desire  to  show  the  frame 
of  an  athlete.  To  this  end  he  used  to  encase  himself  in  number- 
less great-coats,  from  which,  when  he  came  to  the  Foreign  Office 
and  the  heat  became  intolerable,  he  would  pray  some  kindly  clerk 
to  set  him  free,  and  the  poor  old  mummy  was  unrolled.  As 
Ambassador  at  Constantinople  he  had  ample  opportunities  for 
the  exercise  of  his  peculiar  talents  ;  he  was  often  in  hot  water, 
but,  like  a  famous  bishop,  always  contrived  to  come  out  with  his 
hands  clean.*  His  methods  were  not  those  of  Lord  Lyons,  they 
were  far  more  nearly  in  accord  with  those  of  the  Russian  Am- 
bassador, General  Ignatieff,  whom  the  Turks  called  "  the  father 

*  Bishop  Wilberforce's  answer  to  a  friend  who  asked  him  why  he  was 
nicknamed  "  Soapy  Sam." 


15°  Memories 

of  lies."  Lord  Lyons'  transparent  honesty  must  have  been  an 
astonishment  to  Constantinople,  which  was  used  to  being  a  hot- 
bed of  underhand  machinations,  plots  and  counterplots,  and  where 
no  diplomatist  trusted  anybody  else,  least  of  all  the  colleagues 
with  whom  he  was  supposed  to  live  in  brotherly  love.  However, 
it  was  a  time  of  comparative  calm,  and  Lord  Lyons,  accompanied 
by  his  two  trusty  henchmen,  Malet  and  Sheffield,  whom,  with 
his  usual  affection  for  his  friends,  he  had  insisted  upon  taking 
with  him,  was  able  to  enjoy  all  the  charm  of  that  most  captivating 
city  in  a  peace  of  mind  to  which  he  had  long  been  a  stranger. 

The  Danubian  principalities  were  a  worry,  as  they  always  had 
been,  and  as,  now  that  they  have  been  exalted  into  Kingdoms 
with  a  rich  importation  of  ready-made  monarchs  from  abroad, 
they  continue  to  be.  Crete  was  another  difficulty,  as  it  has  been 
ever  since  the  days  of  the  three  evil  Kappas.  Still  there  were 
troubles  which,  after  the  years  of  perpetual  pin-pricks  and  immi- 
nent international  dangers  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  must 
have  been  looked  upon  by  Lord  Lyons  as  no  more  than  enough 
to  keep  his  armour  from  growing  rusty. 

In  1867  Lord  Cowley  resigned  the  Embassy  at  Paris,  and  the 
post  was  offered  by  Lord  Stanley  to  Lord  Lyons.  Lord  Cowley 
was  a  model  diplomatist  of  the  old  school,  self -restrained,  un- 
demonstrative, absolutely  ignorant  of  those  arts  of  advertisement 
which  form  too  large  a  portion  of  the  equipment  of  the  statesmen 
of  to-day.  He  had  been  brought  up  in  the  strictest  sect  of 
diplomacy,  and  only  six  years,  during  which  the  Embassy  at 
Paris  had  been  held  by  Lord  Normanby,  separated  him  from  the 
tune  when  his  father  held  the  same  post.  The  first  Lord  Cowley 
was  one  of  those  three  famous  brothers,  the  other  two  being  the 
great  Duke  of  Wellington  and  the  Marquess  of  Wellesley,  of 
whom  it  would  be  idle  and  out  of  place  to  say  aught  here.  The 
second  Lord  Cowley,  afterwards  created  an  earl,  had  gained  an 
influence  at  the  Court  of  the  Tuileries  which  on  more  than  one 
occasion  saved  a  difficult  situation.  Never  was  this  more  con- 
spicuously shown  than  when,  in  1860,  Mr.  Cobden  was  sent  to 
Paris  on  his  famous  mission  in  connection  with  the  treaty  of 
commerce.  The  negotiations,  so  long  as  Mr.  Cobden  insisted  on 


Lord  Lyons  151 

conducting  them  by  himself,  were  none  too  prosperous.  Indeed, 
there  came  a  day  when  after  a  protracted  conference,  Mr.  Cobden 
came  back  to  the  British  Embassy  ready  to  throw  up  the  sponge. 
Lord  Cowley  comforted  him  and  said  :  "  Let  me  see  what  I  can 
do."  He  skilfully  turned  the  corner  and  the  treaty  was  signed. 
But  Cobden  claimed  and  received  all  the  glory. 

It  was  in  the  footsteps  of  this  great  diplomatist  and  statesman, 
whose  quiet  dignity,  no  less  than  his  political  sagacity,  had  made 
him  a  very  real  factor  in  all  international  affairs,  that  Lord  Lyons 
was  to  follow.  He  felt  that  it  was  a  difficult  succession  ;  he  wrote 
to  him  :  "  When  I  first  heard  that  you  were  likely  to  give  up 
Paris,  I  felt,  as  I  think  I  said  in  my  letter  to  you,  alarmed  at  the 
prospect  of  the  Embassy's  falling  into  other  hands.  I  should  have 
been  indeed  alarmed  had  I  then  known  into  whose  hands  it  was 
likely  to  fall."  This  was  characteristic  modesty,  but  Lord  Lyons 
need  have  been  under  no  alarm.  Lord  Cowley  might  well  feel  that 
his  successor  would  be  worthy  of  him,  and  it  is  hardly  too  much 
to  surmise  that  his  advice  was  sought  by  Lord  Stanley  before  the 
appointment  was  made.  Lord  Cowley  was  acquainted  as  no 
other  man  could  be  with  all  the  forces  at  work  in  France  from 
the  Emperor  downwards  ;  he  knew  the  whole  intricate  network 
of  French  politics,  and  he  was  in  a  position  to  take  the  measure 
of  all  the  men  who  might  be  "  in  the  running  "  for  the  Embassy. 
It  is  hardly  thinkable  that  so  judicious  a  statesman  as  Lord 
Stanley  should  not  have  consulted  him.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the 
wisdom  of  the  choice  was  fully  justified. 

Lord  Lyons  had  now  reached  the  highest  reward  which  his 
profession  had  to  offer.  The  Embassy  at  Paris  must  always  be, 
in  importance  as  in  dignity,  superior  to  any  other  diplomatic  post. 
In  the  days  of  which  we  are  writing  it  was,  and  probably  still  is, 
more  or  less  an  annexe  of  the  Foreign  Office  in  Downing  Street. 
There  are  few  international  questions  in  which  the  interests  of 
England  and  France  are  not  almost  equally  concerned,  whether 
they  be  acting  in  opposition  to  one  another  or  in  concert.  Every 
despatch  which  reached  the  Foreign  Office,  no  matter  whence  it 
came,  was  copied  for  Paris.  The  labour  which  it  entailed  upon 
the  Ambassador  was  Herculean  ;  indeed,  since  the  day  after  all 


152  Memories 

consists  of  only  twenty-four  hours,  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
even  such  indefatigable  workers  as  Lord  Cowley  and  Lord  Lyons 
could  have  found  time  to  read  and  digest  all  the  matter  which 
was  sent  to  them.  There  were  certain  excellent  and  worthy 
ministers  whose  verbosity  experience  must  have  taught  them  to 
put  on  one  side.  Still,  even  the  absolutely  necessary  work  of 
reading  was  exhausting. 

It  really  seemed  as  if,  in  some  sense,  Lord  Lyons  was  destined 
to  be  the  stormy  petrel  of  diplomacy.  He  was  sent  to  Florence, 
and  the  Grand  Ducal  reign  collapsed.  He  went  to  America,  and 
the  War  of  Secession  broke  out.  He  was  promoted  to  Paris,  and 
there  came  the  great  catastrophe.  So  shrewd  an  observer  as 
Lord  Lyons  could  not  fail  to  see  that  the  throne  of  Louis  Napoleon 
was  tottering.  The  poor  Emperor  was  surrounded  by  difficulties 
with  which  he  seemed  quite  unable  to  cope.  Abroad  there  were 
many  troubles,  not  the  least  of  which  was  the  question  of  the 
occupation  of  Rome,  which  meant  the  bolstering  up  of  the  Papal 
Government.  Then  there  was  the  growing  power  of  Russia  and 
such  matters  as  the  annexation  of  the  Grand  Duchy  of  Baden 
to  the  North  German  Confederation.  Greek  affairs,  the  perennial 
question  of  ceding  Crete  and  other  portions  of  the  Ottoman 
dominions  to  Greece,  was  another  source  of  disquietude. 

In  France  there  was  a  great  feeling  of  discontent,  owing,  as  Lord 
Lyons  said,  "  mainly,  I  imagine,  to  the  inconstancy  of  men,  and 
Frenchmen  hi  particular.  In  fact  he  has  reigned  eighteen  years, 
and  they  are  getting  tired  of  so  much  of  the  same  thing  and  want 
novelty."  The  glitter  of  the  Empire  had  ceased  to  dazzle,  and 
even  the  brilliant  Cent  Gardes  no  longer  captivated  the  women 
and  aroused  the  enthusiasm,  tempered  by  jealousy,  of  the  men. 

In  his  own  family  the  Emperor  had,  as  everybody  knew,  to  deal 
with  a  wife  who  was  taking  more  and  more  part  in  public  business, 
in  spite  of  her  declaration  that  she  meant  to  abandon  politics 
for  works  of  charity.  Lord  Lyons'  account  of  an  interview  with 
Her  Majesty  is  very  instructive  on  that  point. 

Then  there  was  Prince  Napoleon  to  be  reckoned  with — a  very 
astute  politician,  with  something  of  the  prophet's  eye  and,  like 
many  another  prophet  of  old,  but  little  of  a  comfort  to  the  ruling 


Lord  Lyons  153 

power.  With  him  also,  for  he  was  a  frequent  visitor  to  the  Em- 
bassy, Lord  Lyons  had  much  talk,  during  which — notably  upon 
the  subject  of  the  Roman  question — it  is  strange  to  be  told  that 
the  Prince  expressed  his  views  in  the  hope  that  they  would  thus 
be  brought  before  the  Emperor — the  English  Ambassador  to  be 
the  intermediary  between  Prince  Napoleon  and  his  cousin  !  This 
Prince,  who  in  many  ways  was  a  deplorable  person,  was  able  to 
impress  Lord  Lyons  by  his  ability  and  shrewd  common  sense. 
"  He  spoke  with  great  animation  and  remarkably  well." 

In  the  spring  of  1868,  Prince  Napoleon  made  a  tour  in  Germany. 
He  returned  fully  impressed  with  the  danger  of  a  war  with  Prussia, 
with  the  folly  of  attempting  to  annex  the  Rhenish  provinces,  and 
with  the  vanity  of  talking  of  disarmament  (how  history  repeats 
itself !),  seeing  that  Prussia  alone  had  two  hundred  thousand  men 
under  arms.  Though  opposed  to  war,  if  war  there  must  be,  it  should 
be  made  at  once ;  the  consolidation  of  Northern  Germany  was  pro- 
ceeding surely  and  rapidly;  the  adhesion  of  Southern  Germany 
would  soon  follow,  and  "  hereafter  war  would  have  to  be  waged 
with  Germany  thoroughly  united  and  perfectly  organized.  .  .  .  He 
considered  that  an  unsuccessful  war  would  overthrow  the  Emperor 
and  his  dynasty  and  send  the  whole  Bonaparte  family  to  the 
right-about ;  a  war  only  partially  successful  would  rather  weaken 
than  strengthen  the  Emperor  at  home ;  while  a  thoroughly  success- 
ful war  would  simply  give  His  Majesty  a  fresh  lease  of  Caesarism, 
and  adjourn  indefinitely  the  liberal  institutions  which  he  [Prince 
Napoleon]  considered  essential  to  the  durability  of  the  dynasty. 
The  Prince  is  not  without  apprehension  as  to  war  being  made  this 
season  [1868] .  He  fears  weak  men,  and  he  looks  upon  the  Emperor 
as  a  weak  man.  He  fears  the  people  who  surround  His  Majesty, 
the  generals,  the  chamberlains,  the  ladies  of  the  Palace." 

These  views  of  Prince  Napoleon,  which  are  among  the  many 
new  contributions  to  history  contained  in  Lord  Newton's  book, 
seemed  well  worth  giving  in  extenso.  The  Prince  was  not  the  only 
man  who  looked  upon  the  relations  with  Germany  in  a  spirit  of 
grave  anxiety.  What  the  intimate  views  of  the  Emperor  may  have 
been  upon  this  subject  it  would  be  hard  to  say.  When,  in  1863, 
he  sulked  in  his  tent,  his  abstention  from  interference  in  the 


154  Memories 

invasion  of  Denmark  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  aggrandize- 
ment of  Prussia ;  it  was  his  fate  to  be  continually  hatching  broods 
of  homing  chickens. 

In  the  meantime  the  Emperor  was  trying  to  bring  about  a  con- 
ference of  the  Powers  to  pull  the  chestnuts  out  of  the  fire  for  him 
in  regard  to  the  Roman  question.  A  conference  was  his  panacea 
for  all  diplomatic  ailments.  In  this  he  was  warmly  seconded  by 
the  Empress,  who,  in  a  long  conversation  with  Lord  Lyons,  hi 
which  "  she  spoke  with  much  grace  both  of  manner,  and,  I  think, 
with  very  great  ability,"  urged  the  importance  and  propriety  of 
non-Catholic,  as  well  as  Catholic,  Powers  taking  part  in  it. 

Lord  Stanley's  comment  upon  this  letter  was  characteristic. 
He  said  that  the  Empress's  "  frank  and  sensible  conversation  " 
furnished  the  best  reason  he  had  received  yet  for  keeping  out  of  the 
affair  altogether.  Why  should  we  be  asked  to  bear  for  the  Emperor 
the  responsibility  which  he  had  assumed  ?  Prince  Napoleon  shared 
Lord  Stanley's  views.  He  thought  that  the  best  service  England 
could  render  the  Emperor,  would  be  to  advise  him  to  give  up  the 
idea  of  a  conference  and  settle  the  matter  with  Italy  by  satisfying, 
at  least  in  a  certain  measure,  Italian  aspirations.  "  He  declares," 
writes  Lord  Lyons,  "  that  Italy  will  never  be  quiet,  and  that  the 
unity  of  Italy  will  never  be  assured  until  she  gets  Rome  for  her 
capital.  He  believes  that  the  Emperor's  support  of  the  Pope  is 
very  unpopular  with  the  great  majority  of  the  French  people,  and 
that  it  will,  if  persevered  in,  be  a  serious  danger  to  the  dynasty." 
.  .  .  He  wishes  England  to  advise  the  Emperor  that  "  He  will 
not  be  able  to  hold  his  own  unless  he  abandons  the  system  of 
personal  government  and  gives  a  large  increase  of  liberty." 

Grumbling  and  growling  everywhere  !  The  Emperor  at  his  wits' 
ends  and  talking  of  "  moral  influence,"  that  last  poor  refuge  of  a 
desperate  statesman  ! 

In  spite  of  political  troubles,  and  the  manifest  lack  of  sympathy 
on  the  part  of  England,  Louis  Napoleon  was  not  slow  in  discovering 
the  charm  and  sterling  merits  of  Lord  Lyons,  whose  tact  could  not 
fail  to  ingratiate  him  wherever  he  went.  "  The  Emperor  talked 
to  me  a  long  time  and  related  to  me  interesting  anecdotes,  some 
very  amusing,  of  the  conduct  of  various  persons  towards  him  in 


Lord  Lyons  155; 

past  times."  But  unfortunately  Lord  Lyons  was  no  gossip,  and  so 
these  "  very  amusing  "  stories  have  been  lost. 

How  entertaining  it  would  have  been  to  be  carried,  like  Cleofas 
by  Asmodeus,  le  diable  boiteux,  through  the  roof,  and  allowed 
to  listen  unseen  to  the  talk  between  the  two.  To  the  world  at 
large  Louis  Napole'on  in  the  Tuileries  was  a  mystery  as  silent  as 
the  Sphinx  in  the  desert,  for  so  the  newspapers  described  him. 
Few  men  suspected  that  in  the  grey  volutes  of  the  brain  which 
lay  behind  that  wooden  mask  there  was  a  sense  of  rather  sardonic 
humour,  which,  when  he  chose  to  give  it  play,  made  him  the  best 
of  company.  We  may  be  sure  that  the  Ambassador,  no  less 
gifted  in  that  respect,  would  not  be  slow  to  throw  back  the  ball 
in  these  encounters  of  wits. 

Like  the  Emperor,  Lord  Lyons  had  a  quite  irresistible  trick  of 
giving  a  whimsical  expression  to  a  commonplace  subject.  He, 
too,  was  in  his  quiet  way  a  humorist.  The  personal  relations 
between  him  and  the  Emperor  were  always  pleasant  and  some- 
times, perhaps,  cordial.  Lord  Lyons  liked  His  Majesty,  though, 
in  one  of  those  rare  outbursts  of  confidence  in  which  he  revealed 
his  thoughts,  he  confessed  to  Lord  Newton  that  he  had  formed  no 
very  high  opinion  of  his  abilities. 

The  attempt  to  arouse  in  England  interest  in  the  Roman  question 
was  fruitless,  but  he  never  quite  gave  up  the  hope  of  inducing  the 
English  Government  to  act  as  pacificators  between  France  and 
Germany.  But  he  had  lost  confidence,  he  was  out  of  spirits,  and 
when  Lord  Cowley,  in  August,  1868,  paid  him  a  visit  at  Fontaine- 
bleau,  he  told  Lord  Lyons  on  his  return  that  he  found  him  much 
depressed  and  aged — a  disappointed  man,  who  would  willingly, 
had  it  been  possible,  have  retired  into  private  life.  The  glamour 
of  the  early  glories  of  his  reign  had  faded  into  mist,  and  he 
was  weary. 

A  little  later  in  the  same  year  Lord  Clarendon,  whose  influence 
with  him  and  with  the  Empress,  whom  he  had  known  from  her 
childhood  when  he  was  Minister  at  Madrid,  was  a  matter  of  common 
knowledge,  dined  with  His  Majesty  at  St.  Cloud,  and  having  just 
returned  from  Berlin,  was  able  to  repeat  to  him  the  pacific  language 
which  he  had  heard  from  the  King  and  Queen  of  Prussia  and  General 


156  Memories 

Moltke.  This  was  good  hearing,  but  the  Emperor  was  at  no  pains 
to  conceal  his  anxiety  lest  anything  should  occur  that  might  arouse 
the  feeling  of  the  army  and  the  nation,  and  he  expressed  his  earnest 
wish  that  "  England  should  step  hi  to  enable  France  and  Prussia 
to  withdraw  with  honour  from  their  present  antagonistic  attitude." 

Lord  Clarendon,  with  that  nobility  which  characterized  all  his 
dealings,  communicated  to  Lord  Lyons  all  that  he  had  learned 
both  at  Berlin  and  at  St.  Cloud,  although  he  knew  that  it  would 
be  for  the  benefit  of  his  political  opponents.  But  by  the  end  of 
the  year  there  was  a  change  of  Government  in  England,  and  to 
the  Emperor's  great  joy  Lord  Clarendon,  the  friend  whom  he 
loved,  was  once  more  at  the  Foreign  Office. 

A  visit  of  the  Crown  Prince  of  Prussia  to  England  enabled  Lord 
Clarendon  to  tell  Lord  Lyons  that  His  Royal  Highness  was  to 
the  full  as  peacefully  inclined  as  his  father,  and  indeed  he  went  a 
step  further,  for  while  he  personally  was  willing  to  see  the  army 
placed  upon  a  peace  footing,  the  King  would  not  hear  of  it.  But 
how  strange  it  seemed  at  a  moment  when  we  in  England  have  been 
proposing  naval  holidays  to  read  talk  of  the  same  nature  earnestly 
exercising  the  minds  of  men  nearly  half  a  century  ago. 

In  spite  of  all  pacific  assurances  the  thunder-clouds,  black  and 
ominous,  were  gathering.  War  was  imminent ;  Prince  Napoleon 
went  so  far  as  to  express  the  opinion  that  it  would  break  out  in 
the  spring  ;  he  was  wrong  by  some  eighteen  months.  Much  was 
to  happen  before  what  was  an  anxiety  should  be  crystallized  into 
a  storm  ending  in  a  tragedy  such  as  the  world  had  seldom  or 
never  seen. 

There  was  a  Cretan  conference ;  a  whole  web  of  intrigue  about 
the  Luxemburg  railway,  and  the  Belgian  question  threatening  the 
peace  of  Europe  ;  a  proposal  for  a  conference  on  international 
postage,  until  Lavalette  told  Lord  Lyons  that  the  country  was  sick 
of  the  very  name  of  the  thing  ;  and  in  spite  of  conferences  and 
pacific  talk,  trouble  was  brewing  in  every  direction. 

Meanwhile  Lord  Lyons  was  subjected  to  an  annoyance  personal 
to  himself,  but  none  the  less  real.  In  the  month  of  June,  1869, 
Lord  Lyons  was  requested  by  Lord  Clarendon  to  return  to  England 
to  vote  on  the  Irish  Church  Bill.  He  strongly  objected  to  doing 


Lord  Lyons  157 

so  on  the  very  proper  ground  that  an  Ambassador  ought  to  abstain 
from  taking  a  hand  in  party  politics.  Lord  Clarendon,  however, 
urged  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  returned  to  the  charge,  and  in  such  pointed 
terms  that  he  could  not  refuse.  How  sorely  it  went  against  the 
grain  with  him  is  plain  from  a  letter  which  two  years  later  he 
addressed  to  Lord  Granville,  when  the  latter  begged  him  to  come 
once  more  and  vote  on  the  Army  Purchase  Bill.  That  Lord  Lyons 
was  right  in  maintaining  that  it  was  inexpedient  for  an  ambassador 
to  vote  on  party  questions  must  be  manifest.  Diplomatists,  like 
other  permanent  civil  servants,  are  bound  to  serve  ministers  of 
whatever  party  may  be  in  office.  If  they  assume  the  attitude  of 
party  men  it  is  not  in  human  nature  that  they  should  command 
that  intimate  confidence  which  is  essential  to  their  relations  with 
the  members  of  the  Government  which  they  have  helped  to  oppose. 

It  is  a  wise  and  cardinal  rule  of  the  English  public  service  that 
its  members  are  neutral.  The  higher  the  position  the  greater  the 
obligation  in  this  sense.  Lord  Lyons  was  deeply  penetrated  with 
the  importance  of  a  principle  which  it  is  a  matter  of  surprise  to  find 
two  such  large-minded  statesmen  as  Lord  Clarendon  and  Lord 
Granville  eager  to  set  aside  for  party  purposes.  It  seems  worth 
while  to  call  attention  to  these  two  incidents,  because  they  show 
what  was  the  opinion  of  one  of  the  most  sagacious  and  prudent  of 
men.  Mr.  Gladstone's  idea  that  the  Government  had  a  right  to 
call  upon  an  ambassador  for  his  vote  needs  no  refuting. 

In  the  course  of  the  correspondence  that  took  place  at  the  end 
of  1869  it  was  clear  that  Lord  Clarendon  had  lost  all  faith,  if  he 
ever  had  any,  in  his  friend  Louis  Napoleon.  In  one  letter  he  went 
so  far  as  to  say,  "  If  the  Emperor  attaches  value  to  the  English 
alliance,  he  ought  not  to  sacrifice  it  by  a  sneaking  attempt  to  in- 
corporate Belgium,  by  means  of  a  railway  company  and  its 
employes.  If  he  wants  war  it  is  a  bad  pretext  for  doing  that  which 
all  mankind  will  blame  him  for."  Later,  on  the  3ist  of  August, 
he  writes  with  prophetic  instinct :  "  The  prospect  of  affairs  in 
France  gives  cause  sufficient  for  anxiety,  and  I  have  an  instinct 
that  they  will  drift  into  a  republic  before  another  year  is  over." 
Indeed,  the  Fates  were  busy  with  the  thread  of  the  Empire's  life. 

Abroad  the  attempts  to  induce  Prussia  to  disarm  pursued  their 


158  Memories 

gentle  but  ineffectual  course  as  before.  Lord  Clarendon  did  more 
than  even  his  best  to  try  and  persuade  Bismarck.  The  man  of 
iron  and  blood  was  polite,  but  unmoved.  The  Due  de  Gramont, 
known  in  his  salad  days  as  "  le  bel  Agenor,"  had  become  Minister 
of  Foreign  Affairs,  and  when  the  thunderbolt  of  the  Hohenzollern 
candidature  for  the  throne  of  Spain  fell  in  the  early  days  of  July, 
the  ex-dandy  Duke  lost  no  time  in  intimating  to  the  British  Am- 
bassador that  France  would  go  to  war  with  both  Spain  and  Prussia 
rather  than  allow  a  Hohenzollern  to  reign  at  Madrid.  .  .  .  "The 
election  of  Montpensier  might  be  looked  upon  as  a  mauvais  precede 
towards  the  Emperor  and  the  dynasty,  but  the  putting  forward  a 
Prussian  was  an  insult  and  an  injury  to  all  France."  At  the  same 
time  the  warlike  Duke  gave  Lord  Lyons  to  understand  that  he 
would  be  grateful  to  England  if  she  would  use  her  influence  with 
Prussia  in  order  to  bring  about  a  solution  of  the  difficulty. 

To  the  unspeakable  sorrow  of  all  England,  and  we  might  say  of 
Europe,  Lord  Clarendon  had  died  on  the  27th  of  June.  It  now 
fell  to  the  lot  of  Lord  Granville  to  deal  with  foreign  affairs. 
On  the  6th  of  July,  he  paid  a  generous  tribute  to  his  predecessor 
when  he  wrote  :  "  It  is  very  sad  that  I  should  be  writing  to  you 
in  the  place  of  one  who  would  have  had  so  much  personal  power 
in  such  a  matter  as  this." 

What  I  have  to  say  of  the  war  of  1870  and  the  causes  which  led 
to  it  must  be  told  elsewhere  ;  here  I  am  dealing  really  with  the  years 
of  the  American  rebellion,  and  have  only  skimmed  the  first  volume 
of  Lord  Newton's  great  book. 

In  surveying  the  twenty  years  during  which  Lord  Lyons  was 
Ambassador  in  Paris,  the  reader  is  fairly  bewildered  by  the  mass 
and  the  magnitude  of  the  questions  with  which  he  had  to  deal. 
The  Presidency  of  Thiers — his  fall  ;  the  election  of  Marechal 
Macmahon  ;  Franco-German  relations,  always  a  threatening  sub- 
ject ;  the  purchase  of  the  Suez  Canal  shares  ;  the  Treaty  of  San 
Stefano  ;  the  proposal  that  Lord  Lyons  should  go  as  English  pleni- 
potentiary to  the  Congress  of  Berlin,  which  to  his  great  relief  was 
settled  by  Lord  Beaconsfield  going  himself  with  Lord  Salisbury  ; 
the  election  of  President  Grevy  ;  the  Eastern  Question  ;  the  concert 
of  Europe,  always  playing  out  of  tune  ;  Tunis  and  Tripoli ;  the 


Lord  Lyons  159 

rebellion  of  Arabi ;  England  abandoned  by  France  in  Egypt ;  the 
pranks  of  the  mountebank  General  Boulanger — the  Napoleon  de 
Cafe  Concert,  an  Agamemnon  with  Paulus,  the  comic  singer,  as 
votes  sacer,  and  "  en  r'venant  de  la  revue  "  as  his  anthem  ;  changes 
of  Government  without  end — these  are  but  stray  items  in  the  work 
with  which  that  silent,  self-contained,  prudent  man,  gifted  with  the 
true  wisdom  of  statesmanship,  had  to  wrestle.  That  he  did  so 
without  ever  making  a  mistake  accounts  for  the  esteem  in  which  he 
was  held  by  so  many  successive  secretaries  of  state.  Their  confi- 
dence was  shown  by  the  numberless  cases  in  which  he  was  left  to 
act  upon  his  own  discretion. 

He  never  gave  greater  proof  of  wisdom  than  when  he  declined 
Lord  Salisbury's  offer  to  him  in  July,  1886,  that  he  should  take  over 
the  seals  of  the  Foreign  Office.  He  was  then  sixty-nine  years  of 
age.  He  was  in  failing  health,  worn  out  by  the  long  exercise  of 
almost  superhuman  industry  ;  indeed,  he  was  nearer  to  his  end  than 
he  himself  imagined.  In  a  singularly  graceful  letter  Lord  Rosebery 
praised  his  decision.  He  continued  his  work  at  Paris  for  anothei 
year,  but  on  the  ist  of  November  he  resigned  and  was  created 
an  Earl.  On  the  28th  of  the  same  month  he  had  a  stroke  of  paralysis, 
and  in  a  week  he  was  dead. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  improve  upon  the  portrait  which  Lord 
Newton  draws  of  his  former  chief.  The  impression  left  upon  the 
mind  of  the  reader  must  be  recognized  as  true  by  all  those  who  had 
the  good  fortune  to  know  him.  As  a  public  man  he  was  absolutely 
devoid  of  all  petty  ambition  ;  he  never  thought  of  advertising 
himself,  on  the  contrary  he  pushed  modesty  almost  to  a  fault ; 
himself  a  most  indefatigable  worker,  he  expected  something  of  the 
same  quality  in  his  subordinates,  who  loved  him  for  his  just,  honest 
and  generous  nature.  In  his  private  life  he  was  simple  and  un- 
ostentatious, yet  always  dignified.  For  the  amusements  in  which 
men  of  his  caste  are  wont  to  find  relief  from  the  cares  of  business, 
he  had  no  liking.  In  no  form  did  sport  attract  him.  He  was 
content  to  go  dowagering  for  an  afternoon  drive  with  Sheffield,  the 
"  Hare,"  so  called  from  his  large,  almost  flapping  ears,  and  Dog 
Toby.  The  party  were  a  familiar  sight  to  Parisians,  who  would 
watch  the  strange  trio  with  some  amazement. 


160  Memories 

We  are  told  that  women  had  so  little  attraction  for  him  that  there 
never  was  even  the  suspicion  of  a  flirtation  in  his  life.  For  his 
family,  on  the  other  hand,  for  his  father,  his  brother  and  his  sisters 
and  their  children  he  entertained  the  most  devoted  love,  and  his 
friends,  especially  Sir  Edward  Malet  and  Mr.  Sheffield,  were  held  by 
him  in  an  affection  which  they  on  their  side  returned  with  interest. 
They  became  inseparable. 

"  It  was  Lord  Lyons's  fate,"  writes  Lord  Newton,  "  to  represent 
this  country  at  most  critical  periods  during  wars  in  the  course  of 
which  England,  while  desiring  to  observe  the  strictest  neutrality, 
aroused  the  bitterest  hostility  on  the  part  of  the  belligerents."* 
These  words  contain  no  exaggeration. 

His  prudence,  patience,  and  self-restraint  steered  the  ship  through 
many  hidden  dangers.  There  is  an  old  saw  which  runs  :  "  Blessed 
is  the  minister  who  does  not  make  history."  It  is  given  to  few  men 
to  make  history;  it  is  given  to  still  fewer  to  prevent  others  from 
making  it.  These  are  the  greatest  of  all,  and  it  is  among  them  that 
Lord  Lyons  takes  an  honoured  place. 

*  "  The  Life  of  Lord  Lyons,"  by  Lord  Newton.  2  vols.  Edwani 
Arnold,  1913. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   WEDDING   OF  THE   PRINCE   OF  WALES 

ON  the  loth  of  March,  1863,  I  had  the  honour  to  be  present  at 
the  wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  in  St.  George's  Chapel 
at  Windsor.  A  number  of  extra  gentlemen-ushers  were  appointed 
for  the  occasion,  and  by  the  kindness  of  Sir  Spencer  Ponsonby  Fane 
always  a  good  friend  to  me,  I  was  one  of  them.  It  was  a  magnificent 
sight,  something  to  remember  for  a  life-time.  The  streets  of 
Windsor  and  all  the  approaches  to  St.  George's  inside  the  glorious 
old  Castle  were  thronged  with  people  radiating  the  happiness  of 
the  day — the  Eton  boys  of  course  in  full  strength,  ready  to  cheer 
till  their  loyal  throats  should  burst.  All  that  was  greatest  and 
noblest  in  the  land  was  present  in  the  Chapel ;  there  cannot  be 
many  people  still  alive  who  were  there,  for  of  course  the  guests 
were  all  of  them  men  who  had  already  made  their  mark  in  the 
world;  and  even  of  those  who  were  on  duty,  I  was  probably  the 
youngest.  Happy  the  bride  upon  whom  the  sun  shines !  It  was  a 
bitterly  cold  day,  but  bright,  and  a  life-giving  sun,  blazing  through 
the  stained-glass  windows,  shone  upon  a  gorgeous  display  of  glittering 
uniforms  ;  the  banners  hanging  from  the  Garter  Knights'  stalls, 
the  tabards  of  the  heralds,  the  gold  coats  of  the  state  trumpeters 
combining  with  the  brilliant  gowns  and  flashing  diamonds  of  the 
ladies,  made  such  a  riotous  feast  of  colour  as  the  world  could  hardly 
match. 

The  procession  of  the  Knights  of  the  Garter  ought  to  have  been 

an  imposing  spectacle,  but  the  good  Knights,  arrayed  in  their  blue 

velvet  robes,  resplendent  with  their  golden  collars  and  stars,  instead 

of  marching  decorously  two  and  two  with  a  suitably  solemn  space 

VOL.  i  161  ii 


162  Memories 

between  the  pairs,  had  contrived  to  club  themselves  into  a  clumsy 
knot  made  up  of  figures  of  various  sizes  and  shapes  in  which  they 
looked  anything  but  dignified,  the  tall  and  stately  Lord  Shaftes- 
bury  towering  over  the  puny  form  of  Lord  Russell.  They  badly 
needed  a  stage-manager. 

The  trumpets  bray  out  triumphantly  announcing  the  procession 
of  the  Bridegroom,  stately,  solemn,  full  of  dignity. 

Once  more  the  trumpets.  Amidst  all  the  glory  of  that  wonderful 
day  nothing  could  equal  the  procession  of  the  Bride.  The  touching 
tenderness  of  her  girlish,  rosebud  beauty  and  graceful  figure,  as  she 
passed  up  the  nave,  her  eyes  shyly  downcast,  looked  like  the  vision 
of  the  Princess  of  a  Fairy  Tale.  Her  entry  into  London  had  been 
the  triumph  of  a  conqueress — her  entry  into  St.  George's  Chapel 
was  the  assumption  of  a  Queendom  over  the  hearts  of  England 
from  which  nothing  can  ever  dethrone  her. 

It  was  a  sad  sight  to  see  the  great  Queen,  then  only  entering  into 
middle  age,  looking  down  from  her  gallery  to  bless  her  son's  happi- 
ness !  When  the  trumpets  heralded  the  Wedding  March  amid  the 
clatter  of  arms  of  the  saluting  Guards,  the  pealing  of  the  organ,  the 
roll  of  the  kettledrums,  and  the  roaring  salvoes  of  artillery,  it  was 
impossible  not  to  feel  that  her  thoughts  must  be  travelling  back  to 
the  death-chamber  hard  by,  where,  some  fifteen  months  earlier, 
she  entered  upon  the  long,  lonely  years  of  her  widowhood.  Half 
hidden,  her  pathetic  figure  struck  the  one  sad  note,  the  memento  mori, 
in  all  that  frenzy  of  rejoicing,  all  that  radiance  of  pomp  and 
splendour,  the  celebration  of  a  nation's  sympathy  with  a  well-beloved 
Prince. 

Perhaps  I  ought  rather  to  say  a  Prince  whom  the  people 
were  ready  to  take  to  their  hearts  ;  for  he  was  still  a  lad,  and 
had  not  yet  had  the  chance  of  showing  what  he  really  was 
worth. 

At  the  risk  of  forestalling  such  story  as  I  have  to  tell  I  would 
fain  insert  here  a  slight  attempt  at  an  appreciation  of  that  young 
bridegroom  as  he  appeared  in  later  life  and  during  his  too  short 
reign  as  King.  A  comparison  of  the  power  exercised  by  him  and 
that  of  the  great  Mother  whom  he  succeeded  almost  inevitably 
comes  within  the  scope  of  such  an  endeavour. 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  163 

It  is  one  of  the  penalties  of  a  high  position  that  whereas  the 
failings  of  those  who  occupy  it  are  apt  to  be  viewed  through  a 
magnifying  glass,  their  good  qualities  are  too  often  examined 
through  the  wrong  end  of  a  telescope.  Even  those  whose  nature 
and  knowledge  would  prompt  them  to  deal  out  praise  in  full 
measure,  speak  under  the  restraint  of  a  reticence  the  motives  of 
which  are  not  difficult  to  understand  ;  and  the  more  exalted  the 
subject  of  this  post-morten  examination  of  character,  the  more 
severe  is  that  restraint  almost  bound  to  be. 

Obituary  notices  of  King  Edward  the  Seventh  have  been 
plentiful  enough.  The  two  most  important  appreciations  of  him 
have  been  Sir  Sidney  Lee's,  in  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Bio- 
graphy," and  the  two  essays  in  Lord  Esher's  recently  published 
book,  entitled,  "  The  Influence  of  King  Edward."  It  is  hardly 
necessary  to  say  that  the  two  views  of  King  Edward's  character 
differ  toto  coelo.  But  then,  whereas  Sir  Sidney  Lee  had  no  intimate 
knowledge  of  the  King,  Lord  Esher  describes  a  man  with  whom 
he  lived  for  many  years  in  that  confidential  intimacy  which  Dr. 
Johnson  held  to  be  the  necessary  condition  for  writing  a  good  bio- 
graphy. The  worst  of  it  is  that  though  Lord  Esher's  book  will 
be  widely  read  now,  it  is  bound  to  share  the  fate  of  all  books, 
which  like  men,  have  their  day  and  then  die.  Habent  sua  fata 
libelli.  With  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  "  the  case  is 
different :  that  will  remain  on  the  shelves  of  every  library,  public 
and  private,  for  many  generations,  and  will  be  consulted  as  an 
authority  long  after  the  writers,  like  their  subjects,  shall  have  faded 
into  the  misty  land  of  ghosts.  That  is  why  articles  in  such  an 
important  book  of  reference  should  be  subjected  before  publica- 
tion to  the  strictest  and  most  impartial  examination.  Afterwards 
it  is  no  use.  "  The  written  word  stands."  Even  should  Sir 
Sidney  Lee  himself,  hi  the  fuller  life  of  King  Edward  upon 
which  he  is  said  to  be  engaged,  endeavour  to  modify,  soften,  or 
even  contradict  some  of  the  statements  in  his  article,  it  will  not 
be  possible  for  him  to  correct  the  false  impression  which  those 
pages  will  create  in  the  minds  of  men  of  a  future  generation. 
Historians  will  turn  to  them  and  will  say  that  since  this  was  written 
immediately  after  the  tragedy  of  1910  by  so  eminent  a  man  of 

VOL.   I  II* 


164  Memories 

letters,  it  must  represent  the  contemporary  judgment  of  the  King's 
personality.  Great  is  the  responsibility. 

The  picture  which  Lord  Esher  gives  of  the  childhood  and  boy- 
hood of  the  Prince  of  Wales  under  the  somewhat  austere  and 
strict  tutelage  of  Queen  Victoria  and  the  Prince  Consort  cannot 
but  fill  his  readers  with  sympathy.  Here  was  a  child,  a  boy,  a 
young  lad,  hedged  round  by  rules  and  regulations  which  must 
have  pressed  upon  him  like  a  strait- waist  coat.  Ardent  and  full 
of  the  highest  spirits,  he  was  cramped  by  such  a  discipline  as  merci- 
fully none  of  us  have  known.  What  would  the  boy  not  have 
given  for  a  game  of  football  ?  How  he  would  have  loved  to  drive 
a.  cricket  ball  over  the  boundary  !  He,  whom  I  have  seen  as  a 
man  of  fifty,  booted  and  skated,  keenly  playing  a  game  of  hockey 
on  the  ice  ?  No  games  were  there  for  him,  no  free  association 
with  playmates  of  his  own  age.  A  boy  or  two,  carefully  selected, 
sent  up  to  Windsor  from  Eton  to  stand  about  in  hopeless  shyness 
in  the  presence  of  tutors,  or  even  under  THE  Eye. 

He  was  sent  to  Oxford,  but  strict  care  was  taken  that  he  should 
have  no  part  in  the  life  of  the  university.  He  might  hear  lectures 
— he  might  see  nothing.  It  was  as  if  you  were  to  send  a  lad  to 
the  theatre  and  set  him  down  in  a  stall  with  his  back  to  the  stage. 

The  first  time  that  I  saw  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  when  his 
father  brought  him  to  Eton  as  a  little  boy  of  twelve  to  hear  the 
"  speeches  "  on  the  Fourth  of  June.  What  a  diversion  for  a  child 
of  his  age,  to  listen  to  us  sixth  form  boys  spouting  Demosthenes, 
jEschylus,  Cicero  !  I  can  see  his  poor  bored  little  face  now.  It 
was  pitiful.  He  is  accused  of  never  having  been  bookish.  How 
could  he  be  when,  like  Swinburne,  he  was  never  allowed  to  read 
even  Walter  Scott's  novels  ?  Swinburne,  however,  when  he  came 
to  Eton  quickly  emancipated  himself.  The  Prince  of  Wales  never 
had  a  chance  of  reading  as  a  boy,  and  later  hi  life  he  had  no  more 
time  than  was  needed  for  studying  the  newspapers,  which  he  did 
most  conscientiously.  Not  upon  him  alone  was  the  grip  of  the 
iron  hand  clenched.  The  instructions  to  his  Governor,  to  his 
tutors,  to  the  gentlemen-in-waiting — authentic  documents  cited 
by  Lord  Esher — make  one  feel  the  choking  atmosphere  of  boredom 
through  which  the  Prince  struggled  into  manhood. 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  165 

How  the  kindly,  genial  Prince,  who  was  to  develop  into  what 
Dr.  Johnson  called  a  "  clubable  "  man,  must  have  chafed  under 
this  prison  treatment !  How  he  must  have  longed  for  emanci- 
pation !  He  had  a  temporary  foretaste  of  it  when  in  1861  he  joined 
the  Grenadier  Guards*  at  the  Curragh.  He  always  looked  back 
with  pleasure  upon  that  short  soldierly  experience. 

When  we  think  of  the  very  strict  severity  of  the  Prince  Consort, 
and  when  we  remember  the  great  part  which  he  played  as  the 
Queen's  confidential  political  adviser,  notably  in  the  Trent  affair, 
where  his  wisdom  helped  to  soften  the  asperities  which  Lord 
Russell  had  aroused  in  the  United  States,  we  are  apt  to  forget  how 
young  he  was  when  on  the  I4th  of  December,  1861,  he  died — barely 
forty-two  years  of  age. 

He  had  not  always  been  popular,  and  the  world  had  been  jealous 
of  his  interference  in  public  affairs  ;  but  all  those  jealousies  were 
soon  forgotten  and  the  Prince's  worth  was  realized  after  his  death. 
That  cruel  sorrow  gave  the  Queen  an  opportunity  of  using  the 
Prince  of  Wales  in  his  father's  place,  making  him  her  confidant 
and  private  secretary,  and  guiding  him  through  the  labyrinths  of 
that  constitutional  lore  of  which  she  was  such  a  mistress.  Need- 
less to  say,  the  opportunity  was  not  made  use  of.  On  the  contrary, 
in  spite  of  the  advice  of  more  than  one  minister — notably  of  Mr. 
Gladstone — the  Queen  politically  held  her  eldest  son  at  arm's 
length. 

It  was  not  until  a  few  years  before  her  death  that  he,  already  a 
middle-aged  man  of  fifty,  was  allowed  access  to  State  papers.  Shut 
out  as  he  was  from  any  participation  in  public  affairs,  his  great 
activities  were  turned  into  two  channels — social  and  ceremonial, 
and  most  admirably  he  fulfilled  those  very  wearisome  duties  of 
royalty  of  which  he  relieved  the  Queen,  who  from  that  time  forth 
worked  diligently,  devotedly,  but  unseen.  Indeed  her  life  was 
wrecked.  She  had  accustomed  herself  to  lean  upon  her  husband, 
who  had  been  her  lover,  her  guide,  and  her  adviser  for  twenty - 
one  years  of  a  marriage  which  had  been  blessed  with  a  happiness 
rarely  found  in  a  station  of  life  where  love  matches  are  the 

*  Not  the  xoth  Hussars,  as  Sir  Sidney  Lee  has  it.  Of  the  loth  he  was 
titular  Colonel-in-Chief. 


1 66  Memories 

exception.  To  the  outside  world  he  might  seem  stiff  and  formal. 
The  prescriptions  of  a  small  German  Court  would  account  for 
that ;  but  to  her  he  was  always  gentle,  kind,  sympathetic.  He 
was  an  exceptional  man ;  tall  and  of  a  commanding  figure,  strik- 
ingly handsome,  highly  educated,  accomplished,  judicious ;  he 
lacked  but  one  quality — that  of  geniality — to  make  him  universally 
popular,  and  even  that  was  no  misfortune,  for  it  may  have  saved 
him  from  stumbling  into  those  pitfalls  with  which  the  path  of 
men  so  gifted,  especially  when  they  are  in  a  commanding  station, 
is  beset. 

One  side  of  his  nature  was  curious.  He  was  essentially  a  shy 
man.  He  would  enter  a  room  to  meet  some  visitor  whom  he  had 
summoned,  sidling  up,  as  it  were,  along  two  walls  of  it  before 
stepping  forward  to  hold  out  his  hand.  That  same  shyness  accounts 
for  a  good  deal  in  his  character ;  for  its  aloofness  and,  above  all, 
for  an  apparent  dislike,  strange  in  so  able  a  man,  to  surround 
himself  with  all  that  was  best  and  most  distinguished  in  science 
and  art.  Such  men  as  Darwin,  Huxley,  Hooker,  Tyndall  were 
practically  unknown  to  him.  He  preferred  the  second  rate.  So 
in  Art,  as  portrait  painter,  he  was  satisfied  with  Landseer  and 
Winterhalter.  Landseer  no  doubt  was  an  excellent  delineator  of 
dogs  and  deer,  but  it  did  not  seem  to  occur  to  the  Prince  that  a 
man  might  be  a  first-rate  painter  of  animal  life  and  yet  fail  signally 
with  Kings  and  Queens.  As  regards  Winterhalter,  it  is  the  world's 
misfortune  that  the  portraits  of  the  principal  personages  who  made 
the  history  of  the  fifties  and  sixties  of  the  last  century  should  have 
been  practically  his  monopoly. 

With  music,  especially  sacred  music  and  the  Opera,  there  was 
great  sympathy  at  Court.  The  Prince  was  an  accomplished  and 
scientific  musician  and  the  Queen  had  a  lovely  voice  which  was 
well-trained  by  that  wonderful  old  singer  Lablache.  But  for 
Literature  there  appeared  to  be  no  place.  I  have  a  sort  of  recollec- 
tion that  Dickens  was  once  sent  for  to  Buckingham  Palace,  but 
that  was  not  until  1870,  the  year  of  his  death.  The  Prince  was 
greatly  pleased  with  Thackeray's  "  May-day  Ode  "  on  the  opening 
of  the  Exhibition  of  1851,  and  he  loved  Tennyson's  "  Idylls  of  the 
King," — they  aroused  in  him  the  ideal  of  the  chivalry  which  he 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  167 

worshipped.  But  there  the  matter  ended,  there  was  no  literary 
society,  no  love  of  books.  The  Prince  and  the  Queen  were  absorbed 
in  politics,  and  their  relaxation  was  taken  ;n  other  directions,  such 
as  the  theatre  and  the  Opera. 

I  dwell  upon  all  this  because  I  am  anxious  to  show  how  King 
Edward's  up-bringing  accounted  for  that  indifference  to  books 
with  which  his  biographers  have  taxed  him.  It  is  the  fashion  to 
talk  with  contempt  of  what  is  called  the  Early  Victorian  Era.  In 
Letters,  at  any  rate,  the  reproach  is  undeserved.  There  was  no 
lack  of  considerable  men.  Putting  on  one  side  the  three  great  names 
that  I  have  already  cited,  we  had  Carlyle,  Browning,  Froude,  George 
Eliot,  the  Brontes,  Ruskin  and  others.  In  the  memorandum  for 
the  guidance  of  the  gentlemen  appointed  to  attend  on  the  Prince 
of  Wales  they  are  told  to  encourage  the  Prince  "  to  devote  some 
of  his  leisure  time  to  music,  to  the  fine  arts,  either  drawing  or  looking 
over  drawings,  engravings,  etc.,  to  hearing  poetry,  amusing  books 
or  good  books  read  aloud  !  "  But  of  that  delightful  solitary  com- 
muning with  books  which  are  the  living  souls  of  great  men — such 
books  as  those  written  by  the  contemporaries  of  whom  I  have 
spoken,  there  is  not  a  word. 

Fancy  an  ardent  boy  of  seventeen  spending  his  leisure  time  in 
turning  over  books  of  drawings  and  prints  !  Would  it  not  be 
mental  starvation  ?  How  much  more  human  would  it  be  for  a  boy 
to  read  "  Pickwick,"  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit,"  "  Vanity  Fair,"  "  Scenes 
from  Clerical  Life,"  "  The  Princess,"  "  Jane  Eyre  "  ! 

For  my  part  I  would  far  rather  see  a  son  of  mine  frown  over  the 
savagery  of  Mr.  Rochester,  or  laugh  at  Mrs.  Gamp  and  Mr.  Pecksniff, 
than  waste  smiles  of  young-lady-like  admiration  upon  Retsch's 
outlines  or  the  "  Keepsake."  But  the  whole  memorandum  is  one 
of  the  strangest  of  documents,  reading  as  if  it  had  been  composed 
for  the  use  and  guidance  of  a  seminary  for  young  ladies. 

There  can  hardly  ever  have  been  so  self-contained  a  Court  as  that 
of  the  Queen  and  Prince  Consort  in  the  early  days  of  their  married 
life.  Outside  of  the  Ladies-  and  Gentlemen-in- Waiting  there  were 
very  few  intimates.  Of  these  the  chief  was  Baron  Stockmar,  the 
retired  physician,  who  had  been  Court  Doctor  to  King  Leopold 
and  the  Princess  Charlotte  of  Wales,  and  who  afterwards  became 


1 68  Memories 

mentor  and  political  tutor  to  Prince  Albert.  At  Windsor  or  Buck- 
ingham Palace  he  came  and  went  as  he  pleased ;  his  room  was 
always  ready  and  he  was  always  welcome.  As  to  that,  there  was 
not  a  little  jealousy,  and  that  jealousy  was  accentuated  by  his 
privileges,  notably  in  that  whereas  the  English  grandees  had  to  wear 
knee-breeches  and  silk  stockings,  the  Baron  was  allowed  to  encase 
his  lean  and  shrivelled  limbs  in  the  warmth  of  trousers  !  A  terrible 
outrage,  intolerable  to  the  said  grandees ;  the  intimacy  was  bad 
enough,  but  the  trousers  were  galling  ! 

Another  welcome  guest  was  the  Prussian  Minister,  Baron  de 
Bunsen,  a  really  remarkable  man.  But  perhaps  the  friend  who 
came  next  to  old  Baron  Stockmar  in  the  estimation,  or  perhaps  I 
might  say  affection,  of  the  Prince  Consort,  was  M.  Sylvain  Van 
de  Weyer,  the  Belgian  Minister,  who  was  not  only  a  diplomatist 
of  conspicuous  ability,  but  also  a  bibliophile  and  an  accomplished 
man  of  letters.  He  was  one  of  the  most  agreeable  men  that  I  ever 
knew,  and  the  power  of  his  personal  charm  upon  the  Court  was 
enhanced  by  the  fact  that  he  was  the  representative  of  the  dearly- 
loved  and  venerated  uncle  both  of  the  Queen  and  Prince. 

The  English  statesmen  were  invited  for  short  visits  to  Windsor 
or  to  dinner  at  Buckingham  Palace,  and,  as  was  necessary,  there  was 
a  Minister  in  attendance  at  Balmoral  or  Osborne,  but  after  Lord 
Melbourne  and  until  Lord  Beaconsfield's  time,  long  after  the  death 
of  the  Prince  Consort,  who  had  no  liking  for  him,  there  was  no 
familiar  intercourse  with  any  Cabinet,  Whig  or  Tory.  Both  the  Queen 
and  the  Prince  Consort  worked  indefatigably,  but  it  was  chiefly 
desk  work — work  in  the  dark. 

The  long,  silent  night  of  sorrow  hi  which  the  Queen  spent  the 
forty  years  which  remained  to  her  after  the  death  of  the  husband 
who  had  been  the  dayspring  and  the  bright  glory  of  her  life,  more 
than  ever  estranged  her  from  taking  any  delight  in  that  personal 
intercourse  which  is  the  chief  lure  of  society. 

I  remember  as  a  boy  seeing  a  drawing  which  impressed  me  greatly. 
On  a  mountain-top  sat  a  solitary  female  figure,  draped  in  black — 
was  she  a  Sibyl,  a  Witch,  a  Norn  ?  I  know  not.  Her  face  resteti 
on  her  right  hand  and  her  weary,  yearning  eyes  looked  out  upon 
the  world  beneath  her,  a  figure  of  mystery  mounting  guard.  Queen 


The  Wedding  ot  the  Prince  of  Wales  169 

Victoria  in  her  loneliness,  watching  from  on  high  over  the  welfare 
of  her  people,  reminded  me  of  that  tragic  figure.  She  was  one  of 
those  "  Princes  "  who,  as  Bacon  said,  "  do  keep  due  sentinel." 

When  the  Prince  of  Wales  assumed  the  toga  virilis,  his  emanci- 
pation heralded  a  new  epoch  in  the  social  life  of  England ;  but  it 
was  not  until  two  or  three  years  after  his  marriage  that  its  full 
effect  was  felt. 

Under  the  new  dispensation  the  hospitalities  at  Marlborough 
House  and  Sandringham  were  lavishly  magnificent,  while  the  small 
and  very  intimate  society  at  Abergeldie  was  delightful.  The 
Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Princess  shone  as  host  and  hostess  :  both 
delighted  in  being  surrounded  by  their  friends,  and  naturally  in 
their  position  it  was  easy  for  them  to  gather  together  all  the  most 
brilliant  and  most  distinguished  people,  some  of  whom  would  even 
travel  from  across  the  Channel  to  be  present  at  entertainments 
the  splendour  of  which  became  famous. 

These  may  seem  at  first  sight  to  be  trivial  matters,  yet  they  had 
their  significance.  We  must  remember  that  when  the  Prince  of 
Wales  married  he  was  very  young — only  just  twenty-one.  He  was 
full  of  high  spirits  and  endowed  with  a  vitality  such  as  I  have 
rarely  seen  equalled.  He  was  debarred,  as  I  have  said  above, 
from  helping  his  mother  in  her  public  work,  and  he  could  only  find 
an  outlet  for  his  marvellous  energies  in  what  might  have  been  barren 
pleasures,  had  he  not  used  them  as  means  of  becoming  intimate  with 
some  of  the  older  and  more  prominent  of  the  ministers  and  states- 
men of  both  parties. 

The  invitations  to  Marlborough  House  and  Sandringham  were  by 
no  means  confined  to  the  butterflies  of  society.  As  often  as  not  the 
Prince  might  be  seen  standing  apart  in  earnest  talk  with  some  such 
man  as  Lord  Granville,  Lord  Clarendon,  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, Bishop  Wilberforce,  one  of  the  great  diplomatists,  Delane, 
Billy  Russell  the  famous  War  Correspondent,  Generals,  Admirals, 
men  of  science.  But  why  dwell  upon  this  ?  It  is  well  known  that 
it  was  through  conversation  and  the  Press  that  the  Prince  acquired 
that  marvellous  fund  of  information  which  enabled  him  to  hold  his 
own  in  any  company. 

His  memory  was  phenomenal :  he  seemed  unable  to  forget.     The 


1 7°  Memories 

business  of  Kingcraft  is  not  one  that  it  is  easy  to  learn.  It  is  im- 
possible for  a  King  to  specialize  in  any  one  subject ;  but  he  must  be 
sufficiently  posted  in  the  trades  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  to 
be  able  to  discuss  intelligently  the  subjects  upon  which  they  have  to 
address  him.  This  King  Edward  did  to  perfection,  and  we  must 
remember  that  this  power  was  not  acquired  all  of  a  sudden,  like  a 
miracle  conferred  upon  him  by  anointment  at  his  coronation  ;  it 
was  the  result  of  long  years  of  patient  listening  and  inquiry — of 
those  same  long  years  which  his  detractors  would  have  us  believe 
were  spent  to  exhaustion  in  the  pursuit  of  frivolous  occupations, 
and  hi  the  selfish  sacrifice  of  duty  to  pleasure.  No  more  false  charge 
was  ever  brought  against  a  man  in  his  exalted  position. 

That  he  was  the  acknowledged  leader  in  the  society  of  which  he 
was  the  darling  is  perfectly  true.  It  is  also  true  that  he  spared  no 
pains  to  promote  the  pleasure  of  others.  But  however  late  he 
might  stay  at  some  entertainment  or  at  the  Marlborough  Club,  he 
was  up  again  at  earliest  dawn  to  attend  a  review  at  Aldershotor 
Spithead,  or  take  part  in  a  ceremonial  in  some  distant  part  of  the 
country,  where  he  would  appear  as  gay  and  as  pleased  as  if  he  was 
fulfilling  the  one  ambition  of  his  life.  His  strength  was  wonderful ; 
he  knew  not  fatigue.  That  was  an  immense  help  to  him.  Later 
in  life  he  allowed  himself  more  rest ;  but  as  a  young  man  he  seemed 
to  be  almost  independent  of  sleep. 

It  has  been  said,  cynically  enough,  that  a  King  has  no  friends. 
That  might  be  the  case  with  a  Roi  Soleil  who  divided  mankind  into 
three  categories — Royal  personages,  white  men,  and  black  men. 
Our  King,  on  the  contrary,  was  so  full  of  human  sympathy  and 
loving-kindness  for  others,  that  he  won  for  himself  an  affection 
such  as  is  given  to  few  men  in  any  position. 

I  remember  in  the  quite  early  days  of  the  Marlborough  Club,  in 
1870,  I  was  standing  talking  with  a  friend  who  died  not  long  since, 
an  old  admiral.  Close  by  was  a  knot  of  men  in  the  heyday  of  youth, 
with  the  Prince  in  the  centre,  a  happy,  joyous  band,  he  the  choragus 
of  the  fun  and  merriment.  My  friend  turned  to  me  and  said  : 
"  See  !  Is  there  one  of  those  men  who  would  not  lay  down  his  life 
for  him  ?  "  That  was  true  of  him  in  those  youthful  days,  and  it 
remained  true  to  the  end. 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  171 

And  now  I  must  skip  many  years,  because  I  am  anxious  to  show 
how  wrong  it  is  to  suppose  that  King  Edward  shirked  work. 

One  night  I  was  dining  at  the  Club,  after  King  Edward  had  come 
to  the  throne,  but  before  he  had  moved  from  Marlborough  House 
into  Buckingham  Palace.  He  knew  that  I  was  in  London  for  two 
or  three  days  alone,  so  he  sent  over  to  ask  whether  I  was  at  the 
Club,  and  if  so  to  bid  me  go  across  to  him.  I  found  him  in  his 
private  sitting-room,  all  alone,  and  we  sat  smoking  and  talking 
over  old  times  for  a  couple  of  hours.  Towards  midnight  he  got  up 
and  said  :  "  Now  I  must  bid  you  good-night,  for  I  must  set  io 
work " — pointing  to  a  huge  pile  of  the  familiar  red  boxes. 
"  Surely,"  I  said,  "  your  Majesty  is  not  going  to  tackle  all  that 
work  to-night  !  "  His  answer  was  :  "  Yes,  I  must !  Besides,  it  is 
all  so  interesting ;  "  and  then  he  gave  me  one  of  his  happy  smiles 
and  I  left  him.  "  So  interesting  !  " — that  was  the  frame  of  mind  in 
which  he  faced  his  work — he,  the  man  who  we  are  expected  to- 
believe  could  not  be  brought  to  attend  to  business  ! 

I  have  no  desire  to  speak  unfairly  of  the  article  in  the  "  National 
Biography."  In  many  passages  it  lavishly  praises  some  of  the  great 
qualities  of  the  King,  and  yet  the  general  impression  conveyed  is 
unfortunate.  The  reader  of  the  future — and  it  is  for  the  future 
far  more  than  for  the  present  that  such  an  estimate  has  importance — 
will  rise  from  the  study  of  this  biography  with  an  altogether  false 
appreciation  of  its  subject.  He  will  see  in  it  the  portrait  of  a  man 
with  many  lovable  characteristics,  indeed,  but  with  little  concep- 
tion of  the  high  functions  to  which  he  was  called ;  he  will  see  a 
Prince  self-indulgent,  impatient  of  duty,  with  little  political  acumen 
even  in  those  matters  of  foreign  policy  hi  which  he  took  the  highest 
interest ;  giving  little  concern  to  home  affairs,  "  unremitting  in  his 
devotion  to  social  pleasures  "  ;  showing  "  aloofness  from  the  work- 
ing of  politics  and  a  certain  disinclination  hastily  to  adopt  his  private 
plans  to  political  emergencies."  I  hope  to  show  that  it  is  in  his- 
more  favourable  comments  that  Sir  Sidney  Lee  is  right,  though 
unfortunately  in  his  hands  the  beam  inclines  too  much  on  the 
wrong  side. 

The  King's  tact,  his  magically  conciliatory  charm,  a  power  of 
fascination  which  can  rarely  have  been  equalled,  his  judgment  oi. 


I72  Memories 

men,  have  been  universally  acknowledged.  He  carried  into  public 
affairs  a  sympathy  and  kindliness  which  bore  rich  fruit.  He  could 
feel  with  a  Gambetta  as  he  could  feel  with  the  proud  chieftain  of  the 
Hapsburgs.  To  a  Scottish  manse,  to  a  Norfolk  parsonage,  he  could 
carry  the  sympathy  of  a  friend,  the  true  message  of  love.  He  could 
enter  into  the  troubles  of  a  humble  cottager  on  his  estate  with  as 
much  interest  as  he  could  listen  to  the  family  difficulties  of  a  Duke. 
Above  all,  he  could  forgive,  and  that  is  perhaps  the  rarest  of  human 
powers.  Those  who  know  could  cite  more  than  one  instance  of  its 
exercise.  Nor  was  all  this  confined  to  mere  words.  He  would 
spend  himself  on  behalf  of  a  friend,  he  would  labour  to  see  righted 
some  poor  wretch  who  he  thought  was  being  treated  unjustly.  His 
courage  was  beyond  proof. 

Such  was  the  King  as  I  knew  him,  and  I  am  not  alone  hi  my  esti- 
mate of  him  :  Sir  William  Harcourt,  a  good  judge  and  surely  no 
sycophant,  said  of  him  that  he  was  the  greatest  King  of  England 
since  William  the  Conqueror.  A  burning  Radical  came  away  from 
his  first  interview  with  him,  saying  :  "  That  is  the  greatest  man 
that  ever  I  had  speech  of."  That  man  knew  him  better  later,  but 
he  never  altered  his  opinion. 

To  one  feature  in  the  King's  character  I  must  reverently  allude. 
He  was  a  convinced  Christian,  devoutly  observing  all  the  ordinances 
of  the  Church.  In  Scotland  he  regularly  attended  the  Parish  Kirk 
at  Crathie.  I  can  call  to  mind  one  Sunday  at  Abergeldie  in  1870 
when  so  fierce  a  storm  was  blustering  outside  that  it  was  impossible 
to  leave  the  Castle.  The  Prince,  then  a  very  young  man,  read  the 
Church  of  England's  service  at  home.  Never  did  I  hear  that 
beautiful  liturgy  more  impressively  read.  The  music  of  his  voice, 
the  perfect  diction — so  conspicuous  in  his  public  utterances — gave 
value  to  every  word  of  those  inspired  prayers.  They  struck  home. 
The  devotional  sense,  obviously  genuine  and  true,  would  have  been 
contagious  in  a  crowded  cathedral.  It  was  no  less  so  in  the  little 
room  in  the  old  grey  castle ;  he  made  us  feel  with  him. 

There  is  a  charge  brought  against  him  in  the  "  National  Bio- 
graphy "  (after  he  had  mounted  the  throne,  mark  you  !)  that  "  at 
times  he  enjoyed  practical  joking  at  the  expense  of  his  friends." 
Nothing  could  be  more  misleading.  When  he  was  a  very  young 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  173 

man — a  mere  boy — he  would  laugh  at  the  wild  pranks  of  some  of 
the  youngsters  by  whom  he  was  surrounded.  What  could  be  more 
natural  ?  They  might  play  tricks  upon  one  another,  but  never 
either  as  Prince  or  King  did  I,,  during  nearly  half  a  century,  see  him 
take  active  part  in  any  such  games  himself.  He  was  always  mindful 
of  his  dignity,  and  for  many  years  before  he  came  to  the  throne  I 
can  affirm  with  certainty  that  no  such  tricks  would  have  been 
permitted  in  his  presence. 

My  recollection  of  the  King  which  I  wish  to  place  on  record  is 
that  of  a  character  made  up  of  various  qualities — a  monarch  deeply 
impressed  with  the  duties  and  obligations  of  his  exalted  station  ; 
a  man  intensely  human,  and,  let  his  critics  say  what  they  will,  alto 
gether  lovable. 

The  death  of  Queen  Victoria  on  the  2ist  of  January,  1901,  was 
not  unexpected,  and  yet  she  had  been  so  long  the  figure-head  of 
the  Constitution  that  when  the  blow  came  it  was  felt  as  a  shock. 
It  was  not  only  the  death  of  a  great  monarch,  it  was  the  death  of 
an  epoch,  the  Finis  and  Colophon  of  a  long  and  very  important 
chapter  in  our  history.  The  Queen  had  out-lived  the  long  list  of 
politicians  who,  during  the  sixty-four  years  of  her  reign,  had  helped 
to  shape  the  destinies  of  Great  Britain.  Lord  Melbourne,  who  won 
the  confidence  and  trained  the  mind  of  the  young  girl  who  was  so 
early  summoned  to  her  high  office ;  Lord  Grey,  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
Lord  Russell,  Lord  Derby,  Lord  Palmerston,  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
Mr.  Gladstone,  were  all  gone.  Of  her  other  two  Prime  Ministers, 
the  great  Lord  Salisbury  was  yet  three  years  short  of  reaching  the 
dignity  of  an  Eton  jacket  when  she  came  to  the  throne ;  Lord 
Rosebery's  mother  had  been  one  of  her  bridesmaids. 

The  early  death  of  the  Prince  Consort  had  deprived  her  of  her 
one  intimate  adviser,  her  one  trusty  friend,  and  for  forty  years 
she  remained  a  lonely  figure,  widowed,  and  more  than  widowed, 
for  her  exalted  station  deprived  her  of  the  companionship  which 
humbler  people  can  enjoy.  She  had  few  friends,  mostly  ladies  who 
had  been  with  her  in  the  happier  days  of  her  life.  Among  these, 
perhaps  the  chief  were  the  Duchess  of  Sutherland,  Lady  Ely,  Lady 
Churchill  and  Lady  Augusta  Stanley.  These  all  died  before  her — 
her  last  confidante  was  Lady  Churchill,  who  predeceased  her  only 


i/4  Memories 

by  a  few  days.  Her  trusty  friends,  Sir  Charles  Phipps,  Sir  Thomas 
Biddulph  and  Sir  Charles  Grey,  were  long  since  dead.  Sir  Henry 
Ponsonby,  her  devoted  and  brilliant  private  secretary,  who  for  so 
many  years  had  served  her  most  faithfully,  died  in  1895.  Two 
excellent  servants  she  had  in  Lord  Stamfordham  and  Sir  Fleetwood 
Edwardes,  but  she  would  not  have  been  human  had  she  not  felt 
her  solitude.  Outliving  is  the  curse  of  old  age.  Nor  was  it 
only  among  her  own  personal  attendants  that  the  Queen  paid 
the  tribute  of  sorrow  which  is  the  penalty  of  a  long  life. 
Two  of  her  sons  and  one  of  her  daughters  predeceased  her. 
The  gallant  Emperor  Frederick,  her  much  loved  son-in-law, 
had  died  hi  1888,  her  grandson,  the  Duke  of  Clarence,  in 
1892.  The  Ashanti  War  led  to  the  death  of  another  son-in- 
law,  Prince  Henry  of  Battenberg,  in  1896.  These  are  what  may 
be  called  unnatural  sorrows,  though,  unfortunately,  they  are 
common  enough.  That  we  should  bury  our  fathers,  though  the 
grief  be  bitter  and  the  loss  irreparable,  is  hi  the  ordinary  course  of 
nature  ;  to  bury  our  sons  seems  a  cruel  reversal  of  all  fitness. 

Through  those  long,  solitary  years  the  Queen  performed  the 
duties  of  her  Queenship  with  unflagging  zeal  and  devotion,  though 
she  remained  a  mystery,  felt  but  invisible.  The  people,  though 
they  would  fain  have  had  more  opportunities  of  seeing  her,  respected 
her  seclusion,  knowing  the  value  of  their  Sovereign,  and  proud  of 
the  successes  of  her  reign.  She  came  to  the  throne  at  a  moment 
when  the  Crown  was  anything  but  popular.  George  the  Fourth 
had  greatly  estranged  his  subjects,  and  William  the  Fourth  was 
not  the  man  to  raise  enthusiasm  from  the  dead.  That  was  reserved 
for  a  young  Princess  who  was  literally  called  out  of  her  sleep  to 
enter  upon  her  high  position  when  she  was  only  eighteen  years 
of  age — a  mere  child.  She  made  the  people  feel  the  value  of  a 
monarchy,  and  so,  in  the  earthquake  of  1848,  when  other  thrones 
were  tottering  and  falling,  hers  was  as  firm  as  a  rock.  Such  slight 
disturbances  as  there  were  hardly  excited  alarm,  and  the  Chartist 
rising,  though  important,  was  not  an  actual  danger  to  the  throne. 

It  was  memorable  as  giving  occasion  for  a  curious  episode  in 
history,  when  Prince  Louis  Napoleon  enlisted  as  special  constable 
and  was  on  duty  with  my  father  in  the  churchyard  in  Mount  Street. 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  175 

Queen  Victoria  was  indeed  the  embodiment  of  the  monarchical 
principle,  an  inheritance  which  she  bequeathed  to  her  son  and 
grandson,  both  of  whom  have  raised  a  glorious  edifice  upon  the 
foundation  which  she  laid. 

When  the  Queen  died  the  mourning  was  honest  and  sincere. 


The  crown  which  Queen  Victoria  had  brightened  by  long  con- 
stancy to  duty  was  now  firmly  rooted  hi  the  instincts  of  the  people. 
In  so  far  as  that  was  concerned,  the  new  King  might  be  said 
to  have  an  easier  part  to  play  at  his  accession  than  she  had.  In 
spite  of  that  he  had  to  face  an  arduous  task.  In  the  two  suc- 
cessions the  positions  were  reversed.  In  her  case  there  was  no 
trouble  or  danger  abroad.  Her  difficulties  lay  at  home.  In  King 
Edward's  case  the  difficulties  were  over  the  sea.  The  power  of 
the  South  African  Republic  was  broken,  and  that  grand,  patriotic 
soldier,  Lord  Roberts,  who  laid  aside  the  greatest  private  sorrow 
that  can  break  a  man's  heart  in  order  to  do  his  public  duty,  had 
come  home  to  receive  at  the  hands  of  the  Queen  the  highest  reward 
which  it  was  in  her  power  to  bestow.  The  earldom  and  the  Garter 
were  never  more  gloriously  earned.  But  it  was  not  until  the  3ist 
of  May  of  the  following  year  that  peace  was  signed. 

On  the  Continent  of  Europe  the  jealousy  of  England  was  virulent, 
and  the  Boer  War,  purposely  misrepresented  and  misunderstood, 
was  used  to  aggravate  the  poison  of  a  disease  which  needed  the  most 
patient  and  delicate  treatment.  It  was  with  this  that  King  Edward 
markedly  busied  himself.  It  was  no  easy  task — especially  in 
Germany.  The  Kaiser  had  been  not  only  a  great  admirer  of  his 
grandmother,  but  he,  as  I  verily  believe,  honestly  loved  her.  He 
came  over  to  England  to  attend  her  death-bed.  He  lost  no  oppor 
tunity  afterwards  of  bearing  witness  to  his  respect  for  her.  Towards 
his  uncle,  King  Edward,  he  entertained  no  such  feeling.  That  is 
a  matter  of  common  knowledge.  There  had  been,  no  doubt, 
differences — never  amounting  to  quarrels — between  them.  They 
were  not  in  sympathy,  and  it  says  much  for  King  Edward's  power 
of  conciliation  that  by  his  endeavour  "  the  rough  ways  were  made 
smooth."  Unfortunately  the  great  rent  was  only  a  question  of  time. 


176  Memories 

The  King's  visits  to  the  Continent  are  treated  in  no  friendly  spirit 
by  the  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,"  which  even  goes  out 
of  its  way  to  belittle  the  part  which  he  played  in  public  work 
abroad  as  at  home.  Speaking  of  his  visits  to  Paris,  the  writer  says : 
"  Political  principles  counted  for  little  in  his  social  intercourse  .  . 
a  modest  estimate  was  set  on  his  political  acumen  when  in  informal 
talk  he  travelled  beyond  safe  generalities."  But  perhaps  no  word 
of  a  serious  writer  on  history,  or  biography,  which  is,  or  should 
be,  history,  by  whomsoever  that  word  may  have  been  inspired, 
ever  more  swiftly  received  material  contradiction  than  the  follow- 
ing: "An  irresponsible  suggestion  at  a  private  party  in  Paris 
that  the  entente  ought  to  be  converted  into  a  military  alliance 
met  with  no  response."  The  response  is  loud  enough  to-day  in  the 
dunes  of  Flanders,  on  the  Vistula,  in  the  Carpathians,  and  in  the 
Dardanelles. 

When  King  Edward  travelled  he  was  carrying  out  the  practice  of 
the  great  foreign  statesmen  who  were  wont  to  take  their  holidays,  or 
at  any  rate  part  of  them,  at  some  foreign  watering-place  like  Gastein, 
Marienbad,  Carlsbad  or  Homburg,  where  the  Prime  Ministers  of 
the  various  countries  met  and  exchanged  views.  That  was  the 
habit  of  the  mighty  Bismarck  himself.  Our  own  statesmen 
neglected  this  until  the  late  Lord  Salisbury  undertook  his  famous 
journey  through  Europe  in  order  to  become  acquainted  and  confer 
with  the  ministers  of  foreign  Powers.  This  abstinence  on  the  part  of 
the  English  leaders  undoubtedly  placed  them  at  a  disadvantage 
when  the  great  international  questions  were  discussed.  Men 
like  Bismarck  and  Andrassy  had  travelled  over  one  another's 
mi  ds,  and  each  knew  exactly  how  best  to  tackle  the  other. 
Our  men  went  to  a  conference  primed  with  technicalities  which 
are  apt  to  become  ineptitudes  when  the  personal  factor  is 
excluded. 

King  Edward  relied  greatly  on  that  personal  factor,  and  he  ob- 
tained a  more  intimate  knowledge  of  the  ruling  men  in  France, 
Germany,  Austria  and  Italy,  not  to  speak  of  lesser  Powers,  than  was 
possessed  by  any  other  English  statesman. 

In  connection  with  the  charge  of  want  of  political  acumen  and 
indifference  to  books  upon  which  so  much  stress  has  been  Ia4d, 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  i?7 


a  very  eminent  French  statesman,  who  knew  the  King  well  and  had 
many  opportunities  of  judging  him,  writes  to  me  as  follows  : 

"  Pour  juger  le  feu  Roi  il  faut  1'avoir  vu  de  pres  et  1'avoir 
frequente  dans  les  moments  difficiles.  Alors  on  pouvait  se  rendre 
compte  de  la  force  de  son  caractere  et  de  la  justesse  de  son  esprit. 
J'ai  ete  le  temoin  le  plus  attentif  de  tout  ce  qu'il  a  fait  pour  amener 
le  rapprochement  de  la  France  et  de  I'Angleterre,  et  de  la  tenacite" 
qu'il  a  apportee  dans  la  poursuite  d'une  politique  que  certaines 
personnes  trouvaient  un  peu  precipitee.  Mais  il  connaissait  mieux 
la  France  que  personne  en  Angleterre  et  il  savait  ce  qu'il  pouvait 
oser.  Je  lui  etais  tres  attache  parceque  je  savais  tout  ce  qu'il 
valait — c'etait  un  homme  d'etat — on  n'apprend  pas  dans  les 
livres  a  etre  un  homme  d'etat ;  on  Test  naturellement  et  rien  ne 
donne  a  ceux  qui  ne  les  possedent  pas  les  qualites  de  decision  et 
de  perspicacite  necessaires  pour  entreprendre  de  grandes  choses. 

This  spontaneous  tribute  of  one  great  statesman  to  the  merits 
of  another  is  a  sufficient  refutation  of  much  that  has  in  ignorance 
been  imputed  to  King  Edward. 

That  he  was  immensely  popular  in  France  is  certain.  French- 
men looked  upon  him  as  a  true  friend,  and  in  society  he  was  said 
to  be  "  le  plus  Parisien  des  Parisiens  "  ;  a  leading  Royalist  once 
said  to  me,  "  Tell  your  King  that  if  ever  he  is  tired  of  his  job  in 
England,  we  will  take  him  by  acclamation."  The  fact  that  he  was 
beloved  by  the  more  frivolous  sets  did  not  prevent  his  being  re- 
spected by  the  serious  politicians.  It  is  idle  to  suppose  that  men 
like  Gambetta,  Clemenceau,  Hanotaux,  Pichon,  Delcasse  and  others 
who  were  wrapt  in  affairs,  sought  his  society  as  that  of  a  mere  man 
of  pleasure,  a  mere  Royal  boulevardier  such  as  the  Prince  of  Orange. 
Like  Sir  William  Harcourt  and  others  of  our  own  leaders  on  both 
sides  in  politics,  they  formed  a  higher  estimate  of  his  worth  than 
that  which  unfortunately  will  be  handed  down  in  the  "  Dictionary." 

The  German  Press,  as  Sir  Sidney  Lee  himself  points  out,  took 
a  very  different  view  from  his  of  the  King's  visits  to  foreign  poten- 
tates. They  were  far  from  thinking  him  to  be  the  negligible  quantity 
in  politics  that  Sir  Sidney  Lee  describes.  Believing  him  to  be  an 
VOL.  i  12 


1 78  Memories 

enemy,  they  looked  upon  him  as  a  dangerous  one.  If  he  paid  a 
visit  to  the  King  of  Italy  it  was  a  deadly  machination  to  disunite 
the  Triple  Alliance.  If  he  met  his  near  relation,  the  Emperor  of 
Russia,  at  Reval  or  Cowes,  it  was  with  the  view  of  soldering  an 
entente  between  England,  France  and  Russia,  and  converting  it 
into  an  alliance,  offensive  and  defensive,  aimed  at  Germany.  In 
all  that  the  King  did  there  was  a  sinister  motive,  a  continuous 
Machiavellian  intrigue  with  one  solid  object. 

The  imputation  of  malevolence  was  based  on  fallacy,  as  Sir  Sidney 
Lee  shows,  but  the  attitude  of  the  German  Press  ought  to  have 
taught  a  great  writer  that  if  highly  instructed  publicists  attached 
such  importance  to  the  King's  participation  in  affairs,  however 
false  might  be  the  motives  ascribed,  his  own  appreciation  of  it 
might  possibly  be  open  to  correction,  and  could  not  fail  to  create 
a  wrong  impression  upon  future  students  of  history. 

The  relations  between  the  King  and  the  Emperor  of  Austria 
were  in  the  highest  degree  cordial — and  no  wonder.  For  the  old 
Emperor,  the  venerable  man  whose  life  had  been  so  cruelly  pur- 
sued by  the  Fates,  the  King,  like  everybody  who  had  a  heart,  felt 
the  most  profound  sympathy,  which  in  his  case  amounted  to 
affection.  The  betrayal  of  1908,  when  Baron  ^Erenthal  annexed 
Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  making  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  into  "  a 
scrap  of  paper,"  and,  borrowing  a  phrase  from  Kant,  justified  his 
action  as  a  "  categorical  imperative,"  was  a  violent  shock  to  King 
Edward. 

It  was  on  the  8th  of  October  that  the  King  received  the  news  at 
Balmoral,  and  no  one  who  was  there  can  forget  how  terribly  he  was 
upset.  Never  did  I  see  him  so  moved.  He  had  paid  the  Emperor 
of  Austria  a  visit  at  Ischl  less  than  two  months  before.  The  meeting 
had  been  friendly  and  affectionate,  ending  with  a  hearty  "  auf 
baldiges  Wiedersehen."  Baron  vErenthal  had  been  with  the 
Emperor,  Sir  Charles  Hardinge  with  King  Edward.  The  two 
Sovereigns  and  the  two  statesmen  had  discussed  the  Eastern 
Question — especially  the  Balkan  difficulties — with  the  utmost 
apparent  intimacy,  and  the  King  left  Ischl  in  the  full  assurance 
that  there  was  no  cloud  on  the  horizon.  Now,  without  a  word  of 
warning,  all  was  changed.  The  King  was  indignant,  for  nobody 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  179 


knew  better  than  he  did  the  danger  of  tampering  with  the  provisions 
of  the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  and  he  saw  that  to  make  any  change  in  the 
Turkish  provinces  was  to  light  a  fuse  which,  sooner  or  later,  was 
bound  to  fire  a  powder  magazine.  Personally,  the  King  felt  that 
he  had  been  treacherously  deceived.  His  forecast  of  the  danger, 
which  he  communicated  at  the  time  to  me,  showed  him  to  be 
possessed  of  that  prevision  which  marks  the  statesman.  Every 
word  that  he  uttered  that  day  has  come  true. 

At  the  outset  of  King  Edward's  reign  we  heard  a  good  deal  of 
our  "  splendid  isolation."  It  was  a  clever  catchword  of  defiance, 
invented  by  a  supremely  brilliant  statesman,  but  it  did  not  help  to 
make  matters  pleasanter  or  safer.  Germany  hated  and  envied 
us  ;  France  suspected  us  ;  Russia  looked  upon  us  as  the  hidden 
enemy,  lurking  by  night.  When  the  King  died  all  was  changed. 
I  am  far  from  saying  that  the  more  friendly  feelings  which  prevailed 
were  entirely  due  to  his  initiation  ;  but  I  do  say  that  without  the 
wonderful  influence  and  personal  charm  which  he  exerted  they 
would  not  have  existed.  He  fully  recognized  his  limitations  as  a 
Constitutional  monarch  ;  it  was  not  for  him  to  start  alliances  ; 
but  he  made  them  possible.  There  were  Ministers  before  his 
time  ;  could  they  have  removed  obstacles  and  softened  asperities 
as  he  did  ?  He  knew,  moreover,  that  no  Sovereign,  no  Government, 
could  utter  a  command  like  that  of  the  first  day  of  creation  :  "  Let 
there  be  peace."  He  knew  that  he  must  work  for  it,  and  he  did — 
incessantly.  To  the  world's  sorrow  another  monarch  in  another 
country  has  said,  "  Let  there  be  war  !  "  and  there  was  war. 

The  signing  of  the  peace  in  South  Africa  on  the  3ist  of  May, 
1902,  came  as  a  fitting  Coronation  present  to  the  King.  The 
ceremony  had  been  fixed  for  the  26th  of  June  ;  but  a  day  or  two 
before  that  date  ugly  rumours  began  to  be  whispered  through  the 
town  as  to  the  King's  health.  He  was  so  anxious  that  nothing 
should  occur  to  prevent  the  Coronation  from  taking  place,  which, 
he  felt,  must  create  the  greatest  disappointment  and  inconvenience 
to  thousands  of  people,  that  he  enjoined  upon  those  about  him 
the  strictest  secrecy  as  to  his  condition,  and  it  was  not  until  Sir 
Francis  Laking  told  him  that  if  he  attempted  to  face  the  fatigue 
he  might  even  die  in  the  Abbey,  pointing  out  what  a  tragedy  that 

VOL.    I  12* 


Memories 


would  be,  that  he  was  at  last  persuaded  to  postpone  the  Coronation. 
Even  so,  mindful,  as  always,  of  others,  he  commanded  that  the 
honours  which  were  to  be  conferred  should  not  be  delayed  by  his 
illness.  The  secret  of  the  operation  was  well  kept,  for  the  public 
and  even  the  King's  friends  knew  nothing  of  it  until  the  24th,  the 
day  upon  which  the  operation  took  place. 

There  was  a  great  flower  show  of  the  Horticultural  Society  at 
Holland  Park  that  afternoon.  The  band  of  the  Blues  had  been 
engaged.  Mr.  Godfrey,  the  bandmaster,  came  up  to  me  and  said 
that  he  had  not  half  his  men.  The  troops  were  confined  to  bar- 
racks —  and  he  had  with  him  only  the  married  men  who  lived  out  ; 
and  then  he  told  me  what  had  happened.  I  rushed  off  and  called 
a  hansom  (there  were  no  taxis  till  four  or  five  years  later)  and 
drove  to  Buckingham  Palace  for  news.  The  account  was  good 
so  far  as  it  went,  but  the  danger  was  still  acute.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  exaggerate  the  anxiety  which  was  felt  all  over  England, 
but  mercifully  the  bulletins  improved  from  day  to  day  :  the 
King  recovered  and  the  Coronation  took  place  on  the  gth  of  August. 
It  was  a  great  anxiety  for  all  those  who  loved  the  King  —  and 
who  was  there  in  all  that  vast  assembly,  or  indeed  throughout 
England,  that  did  not  love  him  ?  —  but  he  bore  the  strain  splendidly 
and  all  was  well. 

The  glories  of  the  Coronation  have  been  described  by  abler 
pens  than  mine  ;  with  them  I  dare  not  compete.  Great  as  West- 
minster Abbey  is,  full  of  immemorial  traditions,  it  can  never  have 
looked  more  splendid  than  it  did  on  that  day  when  Princes,  Peers 
and  Commoners,  subjects  from  lands  lying  far  away  across  the 
seas,  were  all  gathered  together  to  acclaim  their  King.  Never 
before  in  the  history  of  man  had  such  a  world's  gathering  been 
brought  under  one  roof.  And  when  we  listened  to  the  salvoes  of 
artillery,  and  remembered  that  eight  thousand  miles  beneath 
our  feet  the  booming  of  the  cannon  was  thundering  out  the  joy 
of  men  in  the  Antipodes  who  were  fellow-subjects  with  us,  we 
felt  the  power  of  which  that  royal  figure  on  the  throne  was  the 
symbol. 

One  touching  episode  will  never  be  forgotten.  When  the 
venerable  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  did  homage,  he  was  weak 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  181 


and  tired  and  failed  by  himself  to  rise.  The  King  leant  forward 
and,  grasping  the  old  man's  hand,  which  had  anointed  him,  bore 
it  to  his  lips,  and  helped  him  to  stand  upright.  It  was  a  kingly 
act  performed  with  all  the  grace  and  dignity  of  which  our  Lord 
the  King  had  the  secret.  Not  even  the  kiss  when  he  greeted  the 
Prince  of  Wales  with  all  the  tenderness  to  which  the  present  King 
testified  when  he  said  :  "  I  have  lost  not  only  a  Father's  love 
but  the  affectionate  and  intimate  relations  of  a  dear  friend  and 
adviser,"  could  create  greater  emotion  than  this  spontaneous 
tribute  of  respect  to  the  brave  old  prelate,  who  a  few  weeks  later, 
a  slave  to  duty,  made  his  last  heroic  effort  in  the  House  of  Lords 
—broke  down — and  was  taken  home  never  to  come  forth  again. 

We  are  wont  to  talk  of  the  even  tenour  of  life,  when  no  such 
thing  exists.  No  two  days  are  alike,  still  less  are  any  two  years. 
The  "  Ships  that  pass  in  the  night "  are  variously  freighted. 
Some — these  the  rarest — are  laden  with  the  bright,  precious  jewels 
of  happiness ;  some  with  a  cargo  of  neutral  interest ;  others  are 
carrying  the  seeds  of  sorrow  to  be  sowed  broadcast  over  the  world. 
The  death  of  King  Edward  was  felt  far  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  this  country  or  even  of  this  Empire.  He  had  earned  for  him- 
self an  affection  and  influence  such  as  no  British  monarch  had 
ever  before  achieved,  and  when  he  died  the  sorrow  was  literally 
the  people's  sorrow.  For  some  years  before  his  death  his  health 
—though  this  was  not  generally  known — had  caused  no  little 
anxiety  to  his  doctors.  He  was  subject  to  violent  fits  of  spas- 
modic coughing  from  which  it  sometimes  seemed  as  if  he  could 
scarcely  recover.  The  exertion  was  terrifying  to  those  who 
witnessed  it,  and  occasionally  he  appeared  to  be  choking. 

This  was  the  reason  of  his  annual  trips  to  Biarritz  or  some  other 
place  blessed  with  an  atmosphere  purer  than  that  of  the  London 
which  he  loved.  These  journeys,  which  have  been  ungenerously 
attributed  to  the  love  of  pleasure,  were  really  a  matter  of  necessity  ; 
they  furnished  in  a  mild  degree  that  oxygen  which  in  its  pure 
state  is  administered  to  the  dying  in  order  to  relieve  the  pain  of 
breathing — the  pain  from  which  he  so  often  suffered. 

In  the  early  days  of  1910  the  King  seemed  to  outsiders  to  be 


1 82  Memories 

much  in  his  usual  health ;  but  the  doctors  were  nervous  and 
anxious ;  they  were  eager  to  get  him  away  from  London.  On 
the  6th  of  March  he  gave  a  great  dinner-party — only  men — he  was 
in  excellent  spirits  and  after  dinner  went  the  round  of  his  guests, 
as  was  his  wont,  and  chatted  gaily  with  each  of  them.  As  he 
was  leaving  the  room  he  stopped  for  a  moment,  to  talk  to  me, 
and  spoke  with  all  his  natural  cheerfulness,  like  a  boy  before  a 
holiday,  of  his  journey  which  was  to  take  place  on  the  morrow. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  anxiety  felt  by  his  doctors  was  justi- 
fied. "  Only  we,"  said  one  of  them  to  me,  "  know  how  serious 
his  condition  is.  If  he  had  been  a  private  individual  we  should 
have  had  him  away  long  ago."  He  caught  cold  in  Paris  and  was 
very  unwell  when  he  arrived  at  Biarritz.  The  world  at  large 
was  not  told  how  ill  he  was,  and  the  secret  was  well  kept  from 
all  those  who  were  not  behind  the  scenes,  but  for  a  week  he  seemed 
to  be  wrestling  with  death  ;  that  time  he  conquered,  but  the 
victory  was  ephemeral.  On  the  27th  of  April  he  came  home. 
He  was  well  enough,  or  imprudent  enough,  to  go  to  the  Opera, 
which  he  never  willingly  missed,  for  he  was  devoted  to  music. 

One  night  I  happened  to  be  sitting  in  a  stall  near  his  omnibus 
box.  The  King  came  in  and  sat  down  in  his  usual  corner  place. 
I  noticed  that  he  was  looking  very  tired  and  worn.  He  sat  through 
one  act,  all  alone  in  the  box.  Then  he  got  up,  and  I  heard  him 
give  a  great  sigh.  He  opened  the  door  of  the  box,  lingered  for 
a  little  in  the  doorway,  with  a  very  sad  expression  in  his  face — 
so  unlike  himself — took  a  last  look  at  the  house,  and  then  went 
out.  I  never  saw  him  again.  At  the  end  of  the  week,  on  the 
3oth  of  April,  he  went  down  to  Sandringham  to  superintend  some 
work,  and  I  had  been  bidden  to  hold  myself  in  readiness  to  go 
with  him,  as  I  so  often  did  on  those  occasions.  But  when  the 
time  came  he  was  feeling  ill  and  out  of  sorts,  and  so  he  only  took 
with  him  Sir  Dighton  Probyn  and  the  Equerry-in- Waiting.  The 
cold  wind  gave  the  coup  de  grace  and  he  only  came  back  to  London 
to  die. 

Ill  as  he  was  when  he  reached  Buckingham  Palace,  he  worked 
with  all  his  accustomed  energy,  and  on  the  Wednesday,  when 
one  of  the  permanent  heads  of  the  Civil  Service  was  with  him 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  183 


he  was  seized  with  one  of  those  terrible  choking  fits  ol  coughing. 
When  he  got  better  his  visitor  ventured  to  remonstrate  with  him, 
and  begged  him  to  rest,  and  even  go  to  bed,  but  he  ridiculed  the 
idea  and  said,  "  No,  I  shall  not  give  in — I  shall  work  to  the  end. 
Of  what  use  is  it  to  be  alive  if  one  cannot  work."  That  was  how 
he  fulfilled  his  declaration  to  the  Privy  Council  on  his  accession, 
that  "  so  long  as  there  was  breath  in  his  body  he  would  work  for 
the  good  and  amelioration  of  his  people." 

The  King  loved  England.  He  was  a  patriot  in  the  highest, 
I  had  almost  said  the  divinest  sense  of  the  word.  Queen  Mary 
Tudor  said  that  when  she  died  the  word  CALAIS  would  be  found 
written  upon  her  heart.  When  King  Edward  died  the  word  would 
have  been  ENGLAND. 

This  leads  me  once  more  to  the  King's  untiring  power  of  work. 
His  method  differed  entirely  from  that  of  Queen  Victoria,  and 
this  last  interview  of  his  with  a  permanent  civil  servant  well  shows 
how  his  industry  took  another  shape  from  hers.  As  I  have  already 
said,  the  Queen  worked  entirely  at  her  desk  ;  she  was  an  inde- 
fatigable writer  and  would  alter  and  revise  the  drafts  of  her  minis- 
ters freely — often  with  great  effect — as  for  instance  in  the  case 
of  Lord  Russell's  Foreign  Office  despatches.  But  I  suppose  that 
few  sovereigns  have  been  less  in  personal  contact  with  her  minis- 
ters, with  the  single  exception  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  than  Queen 
Victoria  was  after  the  defeat  of  Lord  Melbourne,  who  up  to  that 
time  had  been  always  at  her  side  as  a  confidential  adviser  as  well 
as  responsible  minister.  But  of  the  permanent  officials  she  per- 
sonally made  no  use.  She  never  sent  for  them  or  consulted  them, 
and  I  much  doubt  whether  she  knew  the  heads  even  of  the  Foreign 
Office  or  Treasury  by  sight.  The  chapter  of  accidents  alone  made 
me  an  exception  to  the  rule. 

King  Edward  was  very  different  in  that  respect.  His  work 
with  his  ministers  was  almost  entirely  done  by  discussion  in  per- 
sonal interviews  ;  moreover,  he  knew  all  the  men  of  mark  in  the 
Civil  Service  as  he  did  those  in  the  Army  and  Navy,  and  made 
good  use  of  their  knowledge  and  experience  in  affairs.  I  believe 
that  his  was  the  better  way  ;  at  any  rate,  in  these  days  of  be- 
wildering rapidity,  when  telegraphs  and  telephones  are  at  work 


1 8 1  Memories 

all  day  and  all  night,  the  Oriental  aloofness  of  Queen  Victoria's 
method  could  not  fail  to  be  a  hindrance.  But  apart  from  that, 
I  am  convinced  that  the  King  would  have  been  the  first  to  admit 
that  he  derived  great  advantage  from  the  help  he  received  from 
direct  intercourse  with  the  heads  of  the  various  departments, 
while  their  sovereign's  generous  recognition  could  not  fail  to  be 
a  great  stimulus  to  them.  His  Civil  Service  dinners  were  a  great 
compliment. 

It  is  quite  false  to  suppose  that  King  Edward  took  no  interest 
in  home  politics.  But  let  us  take  a  concrete  case  ;  it  is  worth 
while  for  more  than  one  reason.  In  Sir  Sidney  Lee's  article  there 
is  an  allusion  to  the  King's  attitude  towards  Lord  Haldane's  scheme 
for  a  Territorial  Army.  Now  this  is  what  took  place.  When 
Lord  Haldane — then  War  Minister — had  formulated  his  proposals, 
he  took  them  to  the  King,  who  studied  them  diligently  with  Lord 
Haldane's  explanations,  and  having  with  his  usual  quickness  seen 
the  point,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  scheme  should  have 
a  fair  trial  and  determined  to  give  it  his  support.  With  this  view 
he  did  what  no  other  man — not  even  the  Prime  Minister — could 
have  done  :  he  summoned  the  Lords  Lieutenant  of  Counties  to 
a  meeting  at  Buckingham  Palace  to  confer  with  him  and  Lord 
Haldane — the  Duke  of  Connaught,  himself  a  distinguished  general, 
being  present. 

The  King  made  a  speech  impressing  upon  his  Lieutenants  the 
duty  of  energetically  co-operating  with  the  Secretary  of  State 
in  launching  the  new  county  associations.  To  use  an  expression 
of  one  who  was  present,  "  The  King  played  up  magnificently." 
The  Duke  of  Norfolk  replied  on  behalf  of  his  colleagues,  and  assured 
the  King  in  a  few  admirable  words  that  he  might  rely  upon  his 
Lords  Lieutenant  to  perform  their  new  duties.  We  see  the  result 
to-day.  Right  nobly  have  the  Territorials  justified  their  existence 
and  the  confidence  of  the  King  in  the  great  War  Minister  who  was 
responsible  for  them.  I  have  been  privileged  to  see  a  letter  from 
one  of  the  greatest  of  our  Generals  at  the  front.  It  would  be 
difficult  to  imagine  a  finer  tribute  to  TLord  Haldane's  administration 
of  the  War  Office.  It  is  now  generally  acknowledged  that  but 
for  him  and  for  the  measures  which  he  initiated,  our  position  at 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  185 


the  beginning  of  the  war  would  have  been  very  different  from 
what  it  was.  He  enabled  us  to  send  out  a  force,  which  if  still  in- 
sufficient to  break  the  German  legions,  was  yet  worthy  of  England. 
The  rest  will  follow.  I  hold  no  brief  for  Lord  Haldane,  nor  should 
I  be  guilty  of  the  impertinence  of  attempting  any  estimate  of 
his  work.  He  is  too  great  a  man  and  can  afford  to  be  judged  by 
results.  What  I  seek  to  show  is  the  patient  industry  and  vigilant 
care  with  which  the  King  mastered  a  complicated  scheme  at  a 
moment  when  there  was  no  stimulus  such  as  the  existence,  or  even 
the  near  probability,  of  a  state  of  war  to  excite  the  imagination. 

In  the  same  way  he  supported  his  trusted  friend,  Lord  Fisher, 
in  regard  to  the  Navy ;  and  here  again  we  see  to-day  what  has 
come  of  his  wise  adoption  of  a  new  departure.  Would  that  great 
Lord  of  the  Sea  any  more  than  Lord  Haldane  accuse  the  King  of 
lending  a  languid  or  half-hearted  attention  to  his  proposals  ? 

It  is  a  difficult  matter  for  anyone  who  knew  King  Edward  to 
write  an  appreciation  of  him.  The  danger  of  lapsing  into  indis- 
cretion is  obvious.  At  the  same  time  it  is  equally  clear  that  only 
those  who  did  know  him  intimately  can  give  a  just  estimate  of 
his  character,  and  that  to  leave  his  portrait  to  be  painted  by  those 
who  did  not  know  him,  however  gifted  they  may  be,  must  in- 
evitably lead  to  misconceptions  and  misrepresentations,  and  that 
is  still  more  dangerous.  The  fact  is  that  King  Edward  had  as 
many  sides  to  his  character  as  a  brilliant  has  facets.  The  man 
who  knew  him  not,  sees  one  or  more  of  those  facets  and  rushes 
off  at  a  tangent,  drawing  the  whole  character  from  such  an  im- 
perfect view  of  him.  Nothing  could  be  more  unfair,  nothing 
more  unlucky  in  the  case  of  a  sovereign  who  must  live  in  history. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  some  day  a  life  of  the  King  may  be  written 
in  which  more  stress  may  be  laid  upon  the  noble  features  of  his 
nature,  and  not  such  exaggerated  weight  given  to  those  transient 
foibles  which  mark  the  first  escape  of  an  ardent  youth  from  peda- 
gogic thraldom.  He  had  one  characteristic  for  which  we  may  go 
back  to  the  simile  of  the  brilliant.  No  diamond  could  be  more  purely 
clear  and  honest  than  King  Edward,  and  it  was  that  pellucid  truth- 
fulness which  made  him  so  powerful  in  his  relations  with  foreign 
sovereigns  and  statesmen  :  they  knew  that  when  they  were  dealing 


1 86  Memories 

with  him  they  had  to  do  with  a  King  as  honest  as  Nathanael,  a  man 
in  whom  was  no  guile. 

There  is  a  sentence  in  the  notice  of  the  King  in  the  "  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography  "  which  calls  for  some  observation.  In  con- 
nection with  Mr.  Asquith's  famous  visit  to  Biarritz  to  kiss  hands  on 
becoming  Prime  Minister,  we  are  told  that  "  the  King's  health  was 
held  to  justify  the  breach  of  etiquette.  But  the  episode  brought 
into  strong  relief  the  King's  aloofness  from  the  working  of  politics, 
and  a  certain  disinclination  hastily  to  adapt  his  private  plans  to 
political  emergencies."  That,  I  affirm,  gives  a  most  unfair  idea  of 
the  King's  attitude  to  his  duties.  I  have  given  the  reasons,  not 
generally  understood,  which  occasioned  his  visits  to  Biarritz. 
People  saw  a  strongly  built,  burly  man  and  they  were  slow  to  recog- 
nize in  him  an  invalid  whose  days  were  numbered.  As  regards  the 
last  part  of  my  quotation,  I  dare  assert  that  it  is  entirely  unjust. 
For  forty  years — from  1861  to  1901 — as  Prince  of  Wales,  he,  then  a 
very  young  man,  constantly  had  to  sacrifice  his  own  inclinations  for 
the  performance  of  duties  the  dullness  of  which  was  often  of  the 
most  wearisome  character.  Those  duties  were  carried  out  with  a 
geniality  which  made  men  believe  that  he  was  really  enjoying  him- 
self, and  for  that  they  loved  him. 

He  was  keen  on  sport,  was  gay  and  happy  in  amusement,  delighted 
in  the  theatre  and  the  Opera,  and  in  society,  but  never  was  this  side 
of  his  character  allowed  to  hinder  duty.  "  It  is  all  so  interesting," 
was  a  speech  of  his  which  I  have  quoted  once  before,  in  regard  to  the 
political  work  that  became  his  portion  as  King,  and  which  we  are 
asked  to  believe  that  he  neglected. 

King  Edward's  wonderful  courage  and  coolness  were  notorious. 
It  never  seemed  to  occur  to  him  that  t&ere  could  be  such  a  thing 
as  danger,  or,  if  it  did  exist,  that  it  was  worthy  of  his  notice. 
When  Blondin  offered  to  carry  him  across  Niagara  on  his  tight-rope 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  as  he  then  was,  would  have  accepted  the  ven- 
ture at  once,  and  was  keen  to  go.  But  happily,  though  he  could  not 
be  afraid  for  himself,  there  were  others  who  could  be  afraid  for  him, 
and  he  was  prevented.  When  a  great  chemist  told  him  that  he 
might  safely  put  his  hand  into  a  caldron  containing  I  know  not  what 
seething  metal,  he  did  so  at  once  without  hesitation  or  flinching. 


The  Wedding  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  187 


So  it  was  when  he  was  face  to  face  with  the  murderer  and  his  pistol 
at  Brussels.  His  nerve  was  perfect.  We  all  remember  the  quiet 
courage  with  which  he  cleared  decks  for  action,  and  made  ready  for 
the  operation  which  in  1902  might  easily  have  cost  him  his  life. 
He  was  not  afraid  of  the  chance  of  death  then,  nor  did  he  show  any 
sign  of  fear  when  the  certainty  came  eight  years  later.  On  the 
morning  of  that  fatal  6th  of  May,  1910,  he  was  calm  and  collected. 
He  knew  that  he  was  dying,  but  he  could  face  death  as  cheerfully 
as  he  always  had  faced  life. 

The  end  was  lightning-swift,  but  so  great  was  his  energy  that  he 
had  arranged  to  see  a  private  friend  that  morning.  He  had  desired 
Sir  Ernest  Cassel  to  go  and  visit  him  at  eleven  o'clock.  Sir  Ernest 
found  the  King  dressed  and  sitting  in  his  chair,  from  which  he  rose 
to  greet  and  shake  hands  with  his  friend.  "  I  knew  that  you 
would  not  fail  me,"  he  said.  They  remained  talking  for  a  while, 
but  soon  it  was  evident  that  the  sufferer's  strength  was  waning. 
Sadly  Sir  Ernest  took  his  leave,  feeling  that  it  was  for  the  last  time. 
I  was  at  Stratford-on-Avon,  and  received  a  telegram  saying  that  he 
could  hardly  live  through  the  night.  The  few  sacred  hours  that 
followed  were  watched  over  by  the  tender  care  of  those  nearest 
and  dearest  to  him — the  loving  wife  and  children  who  never  left 
him  till  the  end.  In  the  afternoon  he  was  undressed  and  laid  in 
his  bed ;  the  light  faded  and  he  became  unconscious.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  came  and  joined  in  the  prayers  by  the 
bedside.  A  little  before  midnight  the  brave  heart  had  ceased 
to  beat. 

When  the  black  news  came  a  deadly  pall  fell  over  the  country, 
and  there  were  many  men — some  great,  some  small — who  felt  that 
life  could  never  again  be  quite  the  same  for  them.  It  seemed  im- 
possible. To  the  last  his  energy  was  so  vivid,  the  lamp  of  life's  joy 
burned  so  brightly  in  him,  that  men  could  not  believe  that  the  grey 
mystery  had  extinguished  that  sunny  nature.  But  it  was  all  too 
true  :  the  ringing  voice  was  silenced  for  ever  :  the  King  was  dead. 


Within  the  space  of    ten    years    Great    Britain    had    lost    two 
sovereigns.     Both  were  sincerely  mourned  bv  their  subjects.     But 


1 88  Memories 

there  are  in  grief  qualities  which  differ.  The  sorrow  which  followed 
Queen  Victoria  to  the  grave  was  a  tribute  to  a  great  and  noble 
personality ;  it  was  the  recognition  of  the  value  of  long  years  of 
assiduous  labour,  of  a  lonely  life  consecrated  to  the  good  of  her 
country ;  personally  to  the  vast  majority  of  her  people  she  was 
unknown.  For  forty  years  she  had  lived,  as  the  saying  is  in  the 
East,  "  behind  the  curtain,"  and  though  her  influence  was  felt,  she 
herself  was  shrouded  in  something  of  awe — she  was  as  invisible  as 
Providence.  King  Edward,  on  the  contrary,  had  been  for  half  a 
century  a  most  familiar  figure  in  every  part  of  the  kingdom.  Not 
hundreds,  but  thousands  of  men  could  claim  that  they  had  shaken 
hands  with  him,  and  could  repeat  some  kindly  word  to  which  his 
genial  manner  had  given  emphasis  and  value.  Every  one  of  those 
myriads  felt  as  though  he  had  lost  a  personal  friend — as  if  he  in  his 
humble  self  was  the  poorer. 

For  the  monarchy  the  Queen  had  won  respect  and  admiration, 
and  a  feeling  that 

God's  in  his  heaven, 

All's  right  with  the  world. 

Then  came  King  Edward,  and  he,  without  by  one  jot  lessening  the 
devotion  which  the  great  Queen  had  called  up,  added  to  her  diadem 
the  priceless  pearls  of  personal  love  and  affection.  That  was  the 
crown  of  his  work,  and  since  that  was  won  who  shall  say  that  his 
life  was  lived  in  vain  ?  King  George  has  not  been  long  upon  the 
Throne  ;  but  he  too  has  played  a  part  in  which  we  older  folk  see  an 
assurance  that  he  will  hand  down  to  his  successors  untarnished  and 
undimmed  the  lustre  of  the  glory  of  which  he  is  the  heir. 


CHAPTER  IX 

MY  BROTHER.   MUSIC  AND  THE  DRAMA 

MY  vagabond  pen  has  strayed  far  from  the  year  1863  ;  I  must 
retrace  my  steps.  In  the  month  of  April  of  that  year  my 
eldest  brother,  Percy,  was  married  to  the  brilliant  daughter  of  Lord 
Egerton  of  Tatton.  It  was  the  happiest  of  marriages,  which  was 
without  a  cloud  until  his  too  early  death  in  1883.  He  was  a  very 
clever  man,  but  terribly  hampered  by  bad  health.  He  was  originally 
in  the  Army,  having  entered  the  43rd  Regiment,  from  which  he  ex- 
changed into  the  52nd  and  afterwards  into  the  Scots  Guards.  But  he 
was  so  crippled  with  rheumatic  gout  that  he  had  to  leave  the  Army, 
and  after  a  while  entered  the  Diplomatic  Service,  in  which  he  served 
at  Berlin,  Brussels,  Frankfort  and  Copenhagen.  He  was  one  of  the 
few,  the  very  few  men  who  really  mastered  the  intricacies  of  the 
Schleswig-Holstein  question.  Some  people  say  that  there  were 
only  two — Bismarck  and  his  intimate  enemy,  the  late  Sir  Robert 
Morier.  He  remained  for  several  years  an  attache,  and  then  read 
for  the  Bar,  got  called,  and  entered  with  zeal  into  politics.  He  was 
not  successful  in  gaining  a  seat  in  Parliament,  which  was  a  great 
pity,  for  he  was  an  exceptionally  effective  speaker.  However, 
he  was  able  to  render  good  service  to  the  Conservative  party  in 
other  ways. 

He  had  no  pretensions  to  scholarship,  but  he  had  the  instinct  of 
good  nervous  English,  which,  combined  with  a  sound  knowledge 
of  law  and  of  affairs,  made  him  an  excellent  writer  of  pamphlets, 
leading  articles,  and  political  skits.  To  be  a  regular  contributor 
to  the  Owl,  which  Laurence  Oliphant  edited,  was  a  feather  in 
any  man's  cap,  and  he  was  one  of  the  seven  original  signatories 

189 


190  Memories 

of  the  Primrose  League.  It  is  pretty  certain  that  had  he  lived 
he  would  have  made  his  mark  in  the  political  world.  Dis  aliter 
visum  est — he  died  at  the  moment  when  life  seemed  to  be 
dang  ing  its  choicest  prizes  before  him. 


In  1858,  immediately  after  leaving  Oxford,  I  was  pressed  into 
the  Amateur  Musical  Society  by  Henry  Leslie,  who  was  then 
its  conductor,  and  made  to  play  first  cornet.  In  that  year  was 
held  the  first  rehearsal  for  the  Handel  Festival  at  the  Crystal 
Palace.  The  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography  "  (Article  Costa) 
gives  the  date  as  1857,  which  is  wrong.  The  object  was  to  test 
the  capabilities  of  the  place  for  a  vast  orchestra  and  chorus.  Our 
Society  was  invited  to  join  the  band,  and  so  it  came  to  pass  that 
I  played  at  the  first  cornet's  desk  at  the  rehearsal  in  1858,  and 
afterwards  at  the  Festivals  of  1859,  1862,  and  at  the  opening  of 
the  great  Exhibition  in  London  in  the  latter  year.  Costa,  after- 
wards Sir  Michael,  conducted. 

The  people  who  witnessed  the  failure  of  the  young  Neapolitan 
baritone  at  Birmingham  in  1829  could  have  had  no  suspicion 
that  they  were  rejecting  a  man  who  was  destined  to  become  a 
dominant  influence  in  the  music  of  this  country.  Costa's  voice 
was  weak  and  unattractive,  but  he  had  already  been  deeply 
schooled  in  the  science  of  his  art  by  Zingarelli,  and  had  made 
some  mark  as  a  composer.  It  was  Clementi  who  recognized  his 
true  vocation  as  conductor  :  if  the  story  be  true  that  after  his 
first  appearance  as  leader,  the  members  of  the  band,  who  were  not 
inclined  to  receive  him  with  favour,  presented  him  with  a  box 
of  razors  as  a  way  of  twitting  him  with  his  youth,  there  were  good 
judges  who  at  once  formed  the  highest  opinion  of  his  power. 

The  great  Duke  of  Wellington,*  who  was  devoted  to  music,  and 
never,  if  he  could  help  it,  missed  the  "  Ancient  Concerts  "  or  the 
opera,  was  in  a  box  with  my  father  the  first  time  that  he  saw  Costa 
conduct.  He  was  immensely  struck  by  the  young  conductor's 
dominant  personality,  and  turning  round  to  my  father  said,  "  That 

*   In  his  youth  he  worked  hard  at  the  violin,  and  it  is  said  with  success. 


My  Brother.      Music  and  the  Drama  191 


young  man  could  have  commanded  an  army."  He  recognized 
a  magnetic  influence  which  no  one  who  ever  played  under  him 
failed  to  feel.  His  sway  over  his  orchestra  was  phenomenal.  He 
was  the  incarnation  of  masterful  will-power.  When  I  first  knew 
him  in  about  the  year  1850  he  was  forty  years  of  age.  A  sturdy, 
powerfully-built  man  of  about  the  middle  height — curly,  rather 
fair  hair — whiskers  meeting  under  his  chin  ;  slightly  pitted  with 
the  smallpox  ;  a  pale  complexion.  But  what  always  struck  me 
most  about  him  was  the  massive  lower  jaw,  that  meant  so  much. 
I  knew  him  well  till  his  death  in  1884,  or  rather  till  his  terrible 
illness  in  1883 — paralysis,  which  deprived  him  of  the  power  of 
speech.  The  last  time  I  saw  him  in  Pall  Mall  he  could  only  point 
with  his  finger  to  his  tongue  ;  he  shook  his  head  sadly,  his  eyes 
filled  with  tears,  he  pressed  my  hand  warmly  in  a  parting  which 
we  both  knew  must  be  the  last. 

I  remember  the  occasion  when  after  we  had  rehearsed  Meyer- 
beer's opening  music  for  the  Exhibition  of  1862,  the  composer 
bowed,  thanked  the  band,  and  hailed  Costa  as  the  greatest  con- 
ductor of  the  world.  Richter  is  the  only  conductor  that  I  have 
seen  who  could  be  compared  with  him.  Leaving  on  one  side  the 
many  faults  that  have  been  found  with  Costa  as  a  musician — 
chiefly  for  tampering  with  scores — I  believe  no  one  could  excel  him 
in  the  art  of  conveying  his  intentions  to  a  great  army  of  performers. 
When  he  stepped  into  the  orchestra,  firmly  grasped  his  baton 
— not  holding  it  with  ladylike  daintiness  between  two  fingers  as 
do  so  many  emasculate  conductors  of  to-day — he  would  give  two 
curious  side  to  side  movements  with  his  head,  a  little  trick  which 
never  failed,  and  then  the  beating  of  the  first  bar,  firm  and  decided, 
made  itself  felt  throughout  band  and  audience,  and  one  realized 
the  appreciation  of  the  great  Duke. 

It  would  hardly  be  thought  likely  that  the  rehearsals  of  a  Handel 
Festival  would  lead  to  comic  incidents — but  they  did  to  not  a 
few.  One  was  at  the  rehearsal  for  the  miscellaneous  day.  We 
were  ready  for  "  See  the  Conquering  Hero  Comes."  The  chorus 
was  to  be  heralded  by  brass  instruments  alone.  Costa  lifted  his 
baton  and  called  out,  "  Now,  Brass  !  One  bar  for  nothing  !  " 
Down  came  the  stick  and  in  the  dead  silence  of  "  one  bar  for 


Memories 


nothing,"  a  solitary  little  tenor  voice  piped  out  "  See  the  Con- 
quering -  "  He  got  no  further,  Costa  tapped  his  desk,  folded 
the  baton  under  his  arm  and  roared  out,  "ARE  YOU  BRASS  ?  " 
There  was  a  roar  of  laughter.  Poor  little  tenor  !  He  must  have 
wished  that  the  Palace  might  collapse  and  he  sink  unnoticed  in 
the  ruins. 

Talking  of  that  day,  who  that  heard  it  could  ever  forget  the 
tragic  pathos  of  Sims  Reeves's  singing  of  "  Waft  her,  Angels  "  ? 
That  and  his  thrilling  declamation  of  the  recitative  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Messiah,  "  Comfort  ye  my  people,"  are  among  the  most 
haunting  memories  of  my  musical  days. 

It  was  a  time  of  great  singers.  Amongst  our  own  folk  Clara 
Novello,  Miss  Dolby,  and  Santley  with  Sims  Reeves  made  a  great 
quartet  ;  for  the  rendering  of  oratorios  there  could  hardly  be  a 
finer.  Amongst  the  foreign  artists,  Grisi  and  Mario,  Lablache, 
Ronconi,  Graziani,  Titiens,  Alboni,  Giuglini,  Patti,  Trebelli,  are 
names  that  will  live. 

With  Mario  and  Grisi  I  was  very  intimate,  they  had  been  old 
friends  of  my  father's  ;  indeed  Mario  and  he  had  sung  together 
when  Mario  was  an  amateur  and  came  to  London  as  Conte  di 
Candia,  a  handsome  young  Sardinian  officer.  There  were  concerts 
at  Bridgewater  House  at  which  Lady  Sandwich  was  the  soprano, 
Miss  Gent,  a  beautiful  Irish  lady,  the  contralto,  Mario  tenor,  and 
my  father  the  baritone.  When  Mario  made  his  debut  in  Paris,  my 
father  travelled  all  the  way  from  Frankfort,  posting,  to  applaud 
him.  For  many  years,  till  I  went  out  to  China,  I  used  to  go  almost 
every  Sunday  during  the  summer  to  Mario's  villa  to  spend  the 
afternoon  in  the  garden,  often  remaining  to  dinner.  They  kept 
open  house  on  Sunday,  and  I  fancy  never  knew  beforehand  how 
many  guests  they  would  have  —  ten  ?  twelve  ?  twenty  ?  All 
were  made  welcome.  Madame  Grisi  at  the  head  of  the  table,  smiling 
and  beautiful,  though  no  longer  young,  with  her  eyes  beaming 
sweetness,  was  the  picture  of  happy  content.  She  did  not  talk 
much,  but  she  had  just  one  little  kind  word  for  everybody,  and  a 
motherly  tenderness  which  seemed  to  enfold  the  whole  world  upon 
which  those  glorious  eyes  were  looking. 

Mario   was    an    altogether    delightful    companion.     He   was    an 


MARIO. 

By  Lord  LeiglUon,  P.R.A. 


My  Brother.     Music  and  the  Drama  193 

artist  to  his  finger-tips.  He  was  no  mean  sculptor,  a  learned 
collector  of  books  and  manuscripts,  a  scholar  full  of  appreciation 
of  all  that  was  beautiful  and  refined,  Many  years  after  the  time 
of  which  I  am  writing,  when  he  came  to  England  for  the  last  time, 
a  little  before  his  death,  he  telegraphed  to  me  to  say  he  was  in 
London.  I  was  in  the  country  and  came  up  at  once.  He  came 
to  my  house  and  we  had  a  long  talk  over  old  times.  I  showed  him 
some  first  states  of  engravings  by  William  Faithorne,  the  elder. 
To  my  amazement  he  knew  all  about  them.  "  Ah  !  mon  cher," 
said  he  in  explanation,  "  J'ai  eu  toutes  les  folies." 

In  the  days  of  his  opulence  his  charity  and  generosity  knew 
no  bounds.  Many  of  his  compatriots  lived  upon  him.  One  day 
I  was  walking  with  him  in  his  garden  at  Fulham,  when  up  came 
a  caricature  of  a  man,  as  tall  and  lean  as  a  church  tower,  with  a 
hat  that  reached  the  skies,  dressed  in  a  long  snuff-coloured  coat 
falling  to  his  heels,  a  grizzled  beard,  and  a  cascade  of  grey  hair 
over  his  shoulders  ;  a  figure  out  of  Struwel  Peter.  He  made  a 
low  sweeping  bow  as  if  he  meant  to  cut  the  turf  with  his  hat. 
"  Signer  Mario  !  "  another  obeisance,  hand  on  heart,  and  once 
more  the  steeple  hat  shaved  the  grass.  "  Ah  !  Dottor  Begge, 
what  have  you  there  ?  "  "  Signor  Mario,  I  hold  here  a  manu- 
script " — producing  a  roll  from  under  his  arm — "  but  a  manuscript  ! 
such  a  manuscript !  "  and  he  blew  a  kiss  into  the  air.  "  Well ! 
What  do  you  want  for  it  ?  '"  asked  Mario.  "  For  you,  Signor 
Mario,  a  mere  nothing,  only  twenty  pounds  sterling."  Mario 
looked  at  it,  bought  it,  and  the  long  Doctor,  bowing  even  lower 
than  before,  stalked  off  happy.  Mario  turned  round  to  me  and 
said,  "  Ca  ne  vaut  pas  vingt  sous  !  Mais,  ce  pauvre  Begge,  il  faut 
bien  qu'il  vive." 

Another  Sunday  an  obviously  very  impecunious  Italian  came 
up  and  told  a  piteous  story  of  misery  at  home.  Mario  did  not 
hesitate  a  moment ;  he  told  the  man  to  go  to  his  room,  open  a 
drawer  in  his  writing-table  where  he  would  find  some  notes  and 
gold,  and  take  what  he  wanted.  He  was  a  grand,  large-hearted, 
generous  creature  ;  one  of  the  most  lovable  of  men. 

In  his  later  days  Mario  used  to  be  subject  to  sudden  flushing 
and  slight  giddiness — out  of  this  the  jealousy  and  ill-nature  of 
VOL.  i  13 


Memories 


rivals  got  up  the  myth  that  he  drank.  He  was  well  aware  of  this 
and  made  fun  of  it.  At  dinner  one  evening  there  was  some 
Chateau  Lafitte  of  '48  on  the  table  ;  Mario  poured  out  a  quarter 
of  a  tumbler  of  this  and  filled  it  up  with  water.  I  told  him  that 
it  was  an  act  of  vandalism  to  drown  so  rare  a  wine.  He  held  up 
the  glass  laughing  and  said,  "  Mon  cher,  c'est  avec  cela  que  je  me 
suis  fait  une  reputation  d'ivrogne."  Sometimes  after  dinner  a  valse 
would  be  played  and  Mario  would  call  out,  "  Chi  vuol  ballare  con 
Papa  ?  "  and  he  would  dance  with  his  children,  then  little  girls,  like 
a  boy  in  his  teens.  They  adored  him  and  their  mother,  who  looked 
on  radiant. 

One  met  many  famous  people  in  that  villa.  There  it  was  that 
I  last  saw  the  Countess  Castiglione  —  still  beautiful,  though,  dread- 
ing as  it  was  said  that  her  beauty  might  fade,  she  had  already 
retired  from  the  world  before  her  charms  should  begin  to  wane. 
The  first  time  I  met  her  was  at  an  afternoon  party  at  Holland 
House,  a  dream  of  loveliness  acknowledged  by  everybody  ;  not 
a  fault  to  be  found  from  the  crown  of  her  head  to  the  tips  of  her 
feet,  and  what  arms  and  hands  !  Then  she  was  in  her  pride  of 
queendom,  radiant,  attracting  all  eyes.  Now  she  was  dressed  in 
black,  thickly  veiled,  and  speaking  only  to  Mario  and  Grisi.  But 
disguise  herself  as  she  might,  she  could  not  altogether  hide  her 
transcendent  charms. 

Whether  speaking  or  singing,  I  have  never  heard  such  a  voice 
as  Mario's.  It  was  pure  music.  The  best  testimony  to  its  quality 
came  to  me  secondhand  from  Richard  Wagner.  I  was  talking 
with  Siegfried  Wagner  about  voices,  and  I  said  that  without  a 
doubt  the  finest  tenor  that  I  had  ever  known  was  Mario.  '  Yes," 
said  Siegfried,  ''  my  father  always  said  the  same  thing."  This 
witness  is  the  more  valuable  as  no  one  could  accuse  Wagner  of  any 
predilection  for  the  Italian  school  of  song. 

Giuglini,  the  tenor  of  the  rival  house  where  Titiens  reigned 
supreme,  used  to  be  compared  with  Mario  ;  but  in  my  judgment 
this  was  absurd.  Giuglini's  voice,  lovely  as  it  was,  had  a  slight 
defect  of  "  throatiness,"  whereas  Mario's  voice  came  pure  and 
clear  from  the  chest  On  the  stage  there  was  absolutely  no  com- 
paribon  between  the  two  men.  Mario's  great  beauty  and  his 


My  Brother.     Music  and  the  Drama  195 


marvellous  power  of  acting,  combined  with  an  irresistible  personal 
charm,  made  him  unique.  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  any- 
thing more  thrilling  than  the  tragedy  of  the  two  great  duets  with 
Grisi  in  the  Huguenots  and  the  Favortta. 

Older  people  were  wont  to  say  that  when  he  first  appeared  on 
the  stage  he  was  a  "  stick,"  and  that  it  was  Grisi  who  taught  him 
and  inspired  him  with  the  fire  of  her  own  genius.  If  that  was 
so,  she  found  an  apt  pupil.  She  was  certainly  an  incomparable 
actress,  but  the  talent  must  have  been  latent  in  him  too,  even 
though  the  credit  of  having  called  it  forth  may  belong  to  her. 

In  his  last  years,  when  he  had  retired  from  the  stage,  had  lost 
his  fortune,  and  was  custode  of  a  museum,  Queen  Margherita 
was  extremely  anxious  to  hear  him  sing,  and  commissioned 
Edoardo  Vera,  her  music  master,  to  try  and  get  him  to  do  so. 
After  some  difficulty  Vera,  who  told  me  the  story,  succeeded,  and 
transposed  one  or  two  of  his  old  songs  for  him  so  that  he  was  really 
singing  as  a  baritone.  So  managed,  Vera  told  me  that  the  voice 
was  as  velvety  and  beautiful  as  ever.  The  Queen  was  delighted, 
and  the  dear  old  Mario,  white-haired  and  white-bearded,  charmed 
with  his  reception.  I  can  well  believe  in  the  unimpaired  beauty  of 
so  much  of  the  singing  voice  as  remained,  for  when  last  I  saw  him 
in  1879,  his  speaking  voice  was  still  instinct  with  the  same  music 
that  I  remembered  when  in  the  opening  of  the  Barbiere  he  used  to 
call  out  to  Figaro  behind  the  scenes.  He  died  on  the  nth  of 
December,  1883. 

During  the  last  few  years  of  her  life,  Grisi's  voice  began  to  show 
signs  of  wear  and  tear.  It  was  generally  as  full  and  sonorous  as 
ever,  and  the  "  bel  canto  "  was  glorious.  But  now  and  then  the 
notes  would  fail  her,  and  sometimes  it  made  one  nervous  to  listen 
to  her.  Vera,  always  witty  and  not  seldom  ill-natured,  once 
answered  when  someone  said,  "  La  Grisi  a  toujours  de  bien  beaux 
moments."  "  Oui,  mais  en  revanche  elle  a  des  fichus  quarts 
d'heure."  That  was  exaggeration  born  of  jealousy,  for  Vera  had 
a  sister  Sophie,  whom  he  adored,  and  who  always  had  to  sing 
Adalgisa  when  he  would  fain  have  had  her  take  Grisi's  place  as 
Norma. 

Of  one  musical  recollection  I  am  very  proud.  Grisi,  in  1859, 
VOL.  13* 


196  Memories 

chose  me  to  play  the  cornet  obbligato  for  her  in  a  Romance  by 
Vera,  "  Cari  fior  ch'io  stessa  colsi,"  and  it  ended  with  a  double 
cadence  for  the  voice  and  the  obbligato  instrument.  The  second 
time  that  I  accompanied  her  was  at  a  concert  at  Dudley  House 
given  for  the  benefit  of  a  poor  Italian  baritone,  Ciabatta,  who  was 
dying  of  consumption.  He,  poor  fellow,  had  little  voice  for  the 
opera,  but  was  an  excellent  singing  master.  His  misfortune  was 
that  he  was  one  of  the  handsomest  men  that  could  be  seen,  a  perfect 
Apollo,  and  so  when  he  took  the  best  recommendations,  he  was 
rejected  as  dangerous.  "  Toujours  la  meme  histoire,"  he  said 
piteously  once,  after  a  barren  morning's  lesson-hunting,  "  les 
mamans  ne  veulent  pas  de  moi !  Elles  disent  toutes  que  je  suis 
trop  beau." 

Of  course,  because  Mario  had  a  villa  at  Fulham,  Giuglini,  as 
representing  the  rival  house,  must  have  one  also.  His  villa  had 
a  long  strip  of  garden  with  a  sundial  at  the  bottom  of  it.  Here 
on  Sundays  he  would  invite  his  friends,  and  when  they  were 
gathered  together  he  would  cover  the  sundial  with  breadcrumbs, 
attracting  sparrows,  tits,  blackbirds  and  thrushes.  As  soon  as 
there  was  a  sufficient  congregation  of  these  poor  innocents,  he, 
standing  in  the  verandah,  would  send  for  a  gun  and  blaze  away  at 
them,  exclaiming  to  his  admiring  guests,  "  Voyez-vous,  j 'adore 
la  chasse  !  "  What  a  sportsman  !  Of  his  success  and  charm  as 
a  singer  there  can  be  no  doubt ;  that  he  did  not  please  me  better 
was  probably  my  own  fault.  His  end  was  a  sad  one.  He  lost  his 
reason  and  died  miserably  in  an  asylum,  singing,  as  I  have  been 
told,  to  the  last,  spending  his  lovely  voice  in  the  solitude  of  a 
madman's  cell. 

Jenny  Lind  I  only  heard  after  she  had  left  the  stage.  Her 
operatic  career  was  a  short  one  :  so  far  as  London  was  concerned 
it  only  lasted  two  years.  Her  first  appearance  was  in  1847,  her 
last  in  1849,  when  she  was  only  twenty-nine  years  old.  She  con- 
tinued to  sing  in  concerts  and  oratorios  and  made  a  very  successful 
tour  in  America,  but  the  theatre  knew  her  no  more. 

I  can  well  remember  how  all  London  went  mad  over  her  in  the 
Figlia  del  Reggimento,  when  she  reached  the  zenith  of  her  fame, 
in  later  years,  when  she  was  a  woman  of  about  forty,  I  used  to 


My  Brother.     Music  and  the  Drama  197 


meet  her  and  her  husband  at  the  house  of  a  friend.  She  was  a 
tallish,  stately,  typical  Swedish  woman,  with  a  wealth  of  fair  hair, 
no  special  beauty  of  feature,  but  an  expression  and  above  all  a 
smile  that  were  of  angelic  goodness.  The  voice  was  still  crystal- 
clear,  true  and  sweet ;  even  the  highest  notes — and  heaven  knows 
what  altitudes  she  reached  !  — were  as  soft  and  caressing  as  those 
of  the  middle  register. 

In  my  friend's  little  drawing-room,  with  perhaps  half  a  dozen 
people  present,  all  sympathetic,  Goldsmid  would  sit  down  at 
the  piano,  and  she  would  pour  out  her  soul,  like  the  "  Swedish 
Nightingale  "  that  she  was,  in  liquid  music,  shedding  around  her 
a  happiness  which  she  herself  surely  felt.  Those  little  modest 
dinners  were  feasts  indeed. 

Later  on  in  these  sketches  I  hope  to  have  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
Thomas  Carlyle,  but  one  conversation  that  I  had  with  him  seems 
to  fit  in  so  well  here  that  I  feel  inclined  to  take  it  out  of  its  +»ini. 
It  is  strange  that  he,  who  could  so  cruelly  scourge  the  opera  as 
he  did  in  the  "  Keepsake  "  for  1852,*  should  have  spoken,  with  all 
the  rugged  enthusiasm  that  was  in  him,  both  of  Jenny  Lind  and 
Grisi. 

I  forget  how  the  subject  cropped  up,  but  he  went  off  at  score, 
contrasting  the  two :  "  The  burning,  passionate  nature  of  the  fiery 
Southern  woman  with  the  calm,  cold  temperament  of  the  Northern 
singer  " — those  were  his  very  words.  Of  the  two  I  think  that, 
Scot  though  he  was,  the  fire  of  the  South  appealed  to  him  more 
than  the  snows  of  the  North.  He  preached  on  for  several  minutes, 
giving  due  meed  of  praise  to  both  the  great  singers,  but  always  with 
a  tilt  of  the  scale  in  favour  of  Grisi. 

Then  from  the  opera  he  passed  on  to  the  stage,  and  there  he 
recognized  one  figure  above  all  others.  He  told  me  how  he  had 
seen  Talma  act  in  Paris — how  great  he  was — how  far  ahead  of  all 
other  actors.  What  appealed  to  him  strongly  was  the  statuesque 
side  of  the  famous  player's  genius,  how  completely  he  looked  the 
part  he  was  acting,  especially  in  the  old  classical  tragedies.  "  That 
man  could  so  drape  himself  in  a  toga  that  you  just  felt  that  you 
had  one  of  the  ancient  Romans  before  you."  When  Carlyle  spoke 

*  "  Miscellaneous  Writings,"  Vol.  VII.  p.  123. 


198  Memories 

it  was  with  the  fire  that  he  admired  in  "  the  Southern  woman." 
Ecclefechan  could  vie  with  Palermo.  The  lava  of  his  volcanic 
talk  swept  all  before  it.  I  should  have  liked  to  have  got  him  to 
speak  of  former  lights  of  the  English  stage — the  Kembles,  the  elder 
Kean  and  others.  But  it  was  of  no  use  trying  to  stop  him  when 
once  he  had  started.  As  easily  might  you  hold  the  waters  of 
Lodore  with  a  butterfly-net.  It  was  Jenny  Lind,  Grisi,  Talma — 
nothing  else. 

There  were  some  great  actors  in  my  young  days.  The  infectious 
high  spirits  of  the  younger  Charles  Mathews,  the  solemn  fun  of  Buck- 
stone,  Keeley,  Toole  and  Paul  Bedford  at  the  Adelphi  (the  Paul-y- 
Tooly-technic,  as  some  wag  called  it),  Wigan  and  Leigh  Murray, 
Benjamin  Webster  and  many  others  were  grand  assets  in  the 
gaiety  of  the  nation.  It  is  something  to  have  seen  Charles  Mathews 
in  London  Assurance,  Wigan  with  his  perfect  French,  in  The  First 
Night  (Le  Pere  de  la  Debutante),  Keeley  and  Leigh  Murray  in  The 
Camp  at  Chobham.  What  perfection  of  acting  !  In  light  comedy 
and  farce  the  English  stage  has  always  been  richly  endowed.  Of 
tragedy  perhaps  the  less  said  the  better. 

In  the  early  fifties  Macready,  Phelps  and  Charles  Kean  were 
supposed  to  be  the  shining  lights  among  the  tragedians — Macready, 
indeed,  soon  about  to  pass  into  a  tradition.*  To  me  they  gave 
no  pleasure.  They  seemed  to  rant  and  roar  and  mouth,  tearing  to 
tatters  Othello,  Shylock,  Hamlet,  Macbeth,  King  Lear.  Their 
methods  were  purely  academic,  mechanical  and  utterly  unnatural. 
There  was  plenty  of  elocution,  plenty  of  declamation — nothing 
spontaneous,  nothing  humanly  possible ;  everything  taught, 
nothing  felt ;  of  true  emotion,  begetting  emotion  in  others,  not 
a  trace. 

I  once,  in  1856,  saw  Othello  played  in  a  barn  at  Killarney;  the 
Moor  was  rather  drunk,  but  he  was  as  academic  as  the  great  pro- 
fessors ;  between  him  and  them  there  was  small  difference.  It 
was  a  question  of  degree.  But  here  am  I  daring  to  criticize  when 
I  do  not  even  know  the  jargon  of  the  trade.  What  is  this  that 
is  come  unto  the  son  of  Kish  ?  Is  Saul  also  among  the  critics  ? 

*  He  appeared  on  the  stage  for  the  last  time  in  Macbeth  at  Drury  I^ane 
in  February,  1851.  But  I  heard  him  read  long  after  that. 


My  Brother.     Music  and  the  Drama  199 


Be  it  my  right  to  speak  or  not,  I  shall  maintain  that  Robson, 
the  meteoric  man  who  for  so  short  a  time  was  a  blazing  light  in 
the  theatrical  firmament,  was  the  greatest  actor  that  I  ever  saw  on 
any  stage  at  home  or  abroad.  Upon  him  the  mantle  of  Garrick 
had  fallen,  for  there  was  no  branch  of  his  art  that  came  amiss  to 
him.  He  made  his  reputation  in  grotesque  farces  such  as  The 
Wandering  Minstrel  and  Boots  at  the  "  Swan,"  in  which  he  showed 
the  town  masterpieces  of  eccentric  character  study ;  in  burlesque 
he  had  no  rival ;  and  now  and  then,  as  in  The  Yellow  Dwarf,  he 
would  burst  into  a  fury  of  passionate  acting  without  any  suspicion 
of  rant,  that  sent  cold  thrills  through  the  house,  making  men  feel 
what  he  would  have  been  capable  of  achieving  in  tragedy. 

But  he  was  small,  puny  and  weak,  and  probably  his  frame  would 
hardly  have  carried  him  through  one  of  the  grand  heroic  parts. 
Where  he  was  at  his  best  and  greatest  was  hi  such  tender,  appealing 
plays  as  The  Porter's  Knot.  Here  was  the  real  spirit  of  tragedy, 
and  here  he  differed  from  the  schoolmen  of  whom  I  have  spoken, 
just  as  the  pathos  of  a  story  of  misery  and  woe,  told  simply  and 
plainly  from  heart  to  heart  by  the  sufferer  himself,  differs  from  the 
artificial  emotion  cooked  up  for  a  jury  by  a  lawyer.  He  could 
draw  tears  from  the  stoniest.  Unhappily  the  feeble  body  was  soon 
worn  out ;  his  arduous  work  exhausted  him  ;  stimulants  kept 
him  up  to  the  mark  for  a  time,  but  they,  too,  exacted  their 
penalty.  His  London  successes  lasted  but  some  eight  years, 
for  he  retired  from  the  stage  in  1862,  and  two  years  later  he  died, 
being  not  much  more  than  forty  years  old. 

When  Dion  Boucicault  brought  out  The  Colleen  Bawn  with  his 
beautiful  wife  as  the  Colleen,  his  Miles  na  Coppaleen  fairly  took  the 
town  by  storm.  The  devil-may-care  Irish  joyousness  which  he 
threw  into  the  part  was  irresistible,  and  carried  actors  and  audience 
with  it  from  his  first  entrance  to  the  end.  But  there  was  one 
part  of  his  which  was  even  more  striking.  When  he  played  The 
Vampire,  the  performance  was  so  horrifying,  so  ghastly  in  its 
realism,  that,  if  I  remember  right,  it  was  soon  withdrawn  on  that 
account.  The  public  could  not  stand  it,  and  it  was  not  brought 
out  again.  It  was  a  haunting  performance. 

First   nights   in   the   Victorian   days   were   not   the   fashionable 


zoo  Memories 

gatherings  that  they  now  are.  People  took  no  more  notice  of  them 
than  they  did  of  ordinary  performances.  That  accounted  for  my 
being  present,  quite  by  accident,  at  the  first  night  of  The  Bells  on 
the  25th  of  November,  1871.  The  sensation  which  Irving  created 
in  it  was  sudden  and  startling.  It  was  a  magnificent  success, 
and  Irving's  fame  was  made.  But  what  I  thought  even  better 
was  his  performance  of  Jingle  in  Pickwick,  by  which  the  famous 
play  was  preceded.  He  was  Jingle  to  the  life.  The  impudent, 
lean,  hungry,  out-at-elbows  stroller  and  swindler  was  a  very 
picture  of  bohemian  destitution.  Irving's  many  successes,  his 
shortcomings  and  his  mannerisms  are  of  too  recent  date  to  need 
dwelling  upon.  Whether  he  was  a  great  tragedian  or  not  has  been 
much  debated  ;  but  I  never  heard  two  opinions  as  to  his  powers  in 
comedy  ;  his  Jingle,  his  Jeremy  Diddler  and  his  Doricourt  in 
The  Belle's  Stratagem  were  probably  as  perfect  comedy  as  could 
be  seen.  Personally  he  was  one  of  the  most  charming  of  men,  and 
he  made  many  fast  friends. 

I  was  present  at  a  small  party  of  men  which  he  once  gave  after 
the  play  at  the  Lyceum.  King  Edward,  then  Prince  of  Wales, 
and  many  of  the  foremost  men  of  the  day  had  accepted  his  invi- 
tation. Toole  was  there,  full  of  fun,  and  Irving  recited  the  scene 
with  the  waiter  in  "  David  Copperfield."  He  just  stood  leaning 
against  the  chimney-piece  and  told  the  story.  But  how  he  told 
it  !  That  was  an  inimitable  performance.  The  party  did  not  break 
up  until  long  after  cock-crow.  I  drove  away  with  Russell  Lowell, 
the  American  Minister,  in  a  belated,  or  rather  be-earlied,  hansom 
cab ;  it  was  summer  time  and  broad  daylight,  and  we  two  elderly 
gentlemen  felt  very  dissipated  and  rather  ashamed  of  being  seen. 
but  we  both  agreed  that  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  have  a 
more  agreeable  gathering  or  a  more  genial  host.  The  verdict  of 
Lowell,  wit,  poet,  diplomatist,  man  of  letters  and  man  of  charm, 
was  conclusive. 

Of  great  actors  England  has  always  been  prolific.  I  have  left 
out  many  of  those  who  were  stars  in  the  fifties  and  sixties.  I  have, 
for  instance,  said  nothing  of  my  friend  Sir  Squire  Bancroft,  whose 
memory  must  live  if  only  for  the  noble  use  to  which,  for  many 
years,  he  has  devoted  his  great  talents. 


My  Brother.     Music  and  the  Drama  201 

In  great  actresses,  for  some  mysterious  reason,  we  have  not  been 
so  rich.  When  men  talk  of  women  who  have  been  distinguished 
in  tragedy,  they  still  go  back  to  the  fame  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  Miss 
O'Neill  is  now  forgotten.  As  Lady  Becher  I  used  constantly  to  meet 
her  at  the  house  of  old  Lady  Essex  (the  famous  Miss  Stevens), 
who  used  to  gather  round  her,  together  with  all  that  was  smartest 
in  society,  the  fine  flower  of  the  world  of  art — almost  all  the  great 
musicians  whom  I  have  mentioned  above,  Leighton,  Landseer, 
Marochetti,  Chorley,  Planche  and  a  host  of  celebrities.  Lady 
Becher  as  an  old  lady,  cold,  stiff  and  alarming,  certainly  did  not 
give  one  the  idea  of  an  actress  who  could  so  picture  sorrow  and  agony 
as  to  create  emotion.  But  of  English  tragic  actresses  whom  I 
myself  have  seen  I  can  recall  but  two — Adelaide  Neilson  and 
Ellen  Terry.  I  wish  we  could  claim  the  beautiful  Mary  Anderson, 
who  vera  incessu  patuit  Dea — but  she,  alas !  is  an  American, 
though  for  the  joy  of  Gloucestershire  and  Worcestershire  she  has 
made  her  home  at  Broadway.  Adelaide  Neilson  worked  her  way 
to  fame  from  beginnings  of  the  poorest  and  the  most  squalid  ;  she 
was  an  exemplification  of  the  Japanese  proverb  "  The  lotus  flower 
springs  from  the  mud."  Here  again  was  a  meteor,  for  she  died 
in  Paris  when  only  thirty-two  years  old  ;  but  she  had  lived  long 
enough  to  win  admiration  by  her  beauty  and  great  talent.  Her 
lovable  qualities  appealed  to  her  friends,  and  her  kindness  of  heart 
endeared  her  to  her  brother  and  sister  players.  She  was  a  born 
actress,  and  was  endowed  with  that  greatest  of  all  gifts  for  a 
tragedian — the  gift  so  conspicuous  in  Sarah  Bernhardt — a  speaking 
voice  soft  and  tender,  full  of  musical  pathos  and  emotion,  a  voice 
which  would  of  itself  have  aroused  sympathy  had  she  been  less 
winsome  in  other  ways  than  she  was.  But  in  truth  she  was  a  most 
attractive  woman,  beautiful  to  look  at  and  a  joy  to  listen  to.  Her 
early  death  left  a  void  in  the  English  stage. 

Of  Ellen  Terry  I  need  not  speak.  All  men  know  what  she  is, 
and  none  deny  her  sovereignty.  Besides,  I  am  dealing  only  with 
the  past.  Will  the  future  bring  anything  quite  so  charming  ? 

Fifty  or  sixty  years  ago  the  palm  went  to  the  elder  actresses. 
Mrs.  Sterling  as  Peg  Woffington  in  Tom  Taylor  and  Charles  Reade's 
Masks  and  Faces,  playing  up  to  Benjamin  Webster's  Triplet,  was 


2O2  Memories 

one  of  the  most  extraordinary  pieces  of  acting  that  I  ever  saw  ; 
and  when  she  appeared  as  the  Nurse  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  one  could 
only  mourn  over  the  cruelty  of  time,  feeling  of  how  delightful  a 
Juliet  the  years  had  robbed  us.  Mrs.  Wigan,  acting  with  her 
husband  as  Mrs.  Sternhold  in  Still  Waters  run  Deep,  was  memorably 
good,  and  when  in  The  Bengal  Tiger,  in  order  to  win  the  heart  ot 
the  old  Nabob  (again  Alfred  Wigan  as  the  tiger),  she  tried  to  smoke 
a  hookah,  her  agonies  were  excruciatingly  funny.  Mrs.  Keeley, 
too,  was  a  tower  of  strength  to  any  company.  Her  Jack  Sheppard 
lives  in  my  memory,  as  indeed  do  many  of  her  parts,  as  a  most 
finished  dramatic  picture — the  prison  scene  absolutely  harrowing. 
Like  Robson  and  Garrick,  she  could  be  tragic  or  comic  at  will.  In 
our  young  actresses,  ingenues,  we  were  not  so  fortunate  as  the  play- 
goers of  the  present  day. 

But  we  did  possess  one  star,  at  any  rate,  of  the  first  magnitude. 
In  1862,  when  Miss  Kate  Terry  appeared  in  The  Duke's  Motto 
with  Fechter,*  whose  triumphs  at  Paris  with  Madame  Doche  in 
the  creation  of  the  Dame  aux  Camelias  were  world-famous,  all 
London,  from  Charles  Dickens  downwards,  vowed  that  such 
romantic  acting  had  never  been  seen  and  could  never  be  beatenj 
The  fascination  of  the  love  scenes  was  bewildering.  There  was 
nothing  theatrical  about  them.  They  were  the  very  poetry  of 
emotion.  When  she  left  the  stage  after  a  very  short  and  brilliant 
career  to  become  the  gracious  chatelaine  of  Moray  Lodge,  that 
small  portion  of  the  world  which  calls  itself  Society  was  the  gainer, 
but  to  the  world  at  large  it  was  a  heavy  loss. 

Miss  Madge  Robertson,  now  Mrs.  Kendal,  was  both  a  lovely 
girl  and  a  most  fascinating  actress.  She  it  was,  unless  my  memory 
fails  me,  who  with  her  husband  created  Gilbert's  Pygmalion  and 
Galatea,  which  was  also  one  of  Miss  Mary  Anderson's  great  parts. 
Gilbert  was  lucky  in  getting  two  such  ladies  to  interpret  him. 

A  list  is  mostly  only  interesting  to  those  who  appear  in  it,  and 
this  is  mere  list-making ;  no  more  than  an  attempt  to  register 

*  A  most  picturesque  and  splendid  actor.  A  Frenchman  to  all  intents 
and  purposes,  speaking  English  with  a  strong  French  accent.  There  was  a 
story  that  he  was  born  in  England,  but  that  is  doubtful.  He  died  in  America 
in  1879.  (See  "  Dictionary  of  National  Biography.") 


My  Brother.     Music  and  the  Drama  203 

for  the  present  generation  the  names  of  those  who  delighted  their 
grandfathers — and  most  of  those  who  are  in  it  have  disappeared 
But  even  from  a  list  it  is  impossible  to  omit  the  name  of  Lady 
Bancroft.  To  all  who  saw  her  she  will  always  remain  a  charming 
memory  of  the  days  when  all  the  youth  of  London  was  in  love  with 
Miss  Marie  Wilton — across  the  footlights.  Her  sparkling  gaiety, 
her  delicious  little  impertinencies,  her  irresistible  spirits,  her 
entirely  fascinating  personality,  were  so  full  of  life  that  the  doctors 
might  have  prescribed  a  stall  at  the  Strand  Theatre  for  their  run- 
down patients,  when  she  was  playing  Pippo  in  The  Maid  and  the 
Magpie,  or  one  of  her  other  burlesque  parts.  Then  came  the  days 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre  and  Tom  Robertson's  famous 
plays,  Society,  Caste,  Ours,  School — and  here  again  Miss  Marie 
Wilton  proved  her  great  powers  in  a  new  line.  Acting  more  subtle 
and  more  refined  has  perhaps  never  been  seen.  Her  troupe,  more- 
over, was  famous  for  the  all-round  excellence  with  which  the  pieces 
were  given  ;  it  used  to  be  a  reproach  to  the  English  stage  that  if 
there  were  a  first-rate  star  in  the  company,  the  rest  of  the  charac- 
ters were  more  or  less  left  to  chance,  and  people  used  to  compare 
the  slovenliness  of  our  theatres  with  the  exquisitely  finished  detail 
of  Paris.  •  At  the  Prince  of  Wales's  Theatre,  under  the  Bancroft 
management,  the  finish  given  to  the  smallest  parts  was  as  careful 
and  fastidious  as  that  which  marked  the  play  of  the  chief  actors. 
The  result  was  a  harmonious  whole,  setting  an  example  which  has 
wrought  the  best  influence  on  our  stage.  The  old  slip-shod  per- 
formances which  I  can  remember  would  now  no  longer  be  tolerated, 
and  for  their  disappearance  much  gratitude  is  owing  to  the 
Bancrofts.  Caste  was,  perhaps,  their  masterpiece.  Lady  Ban- 
croft's Polly  Eccles,  with  her  husband  as  Captain  Hawtree,  and 
Sir  John  Hare  as  Eccles,  made  the  piece  a  landmark  in  the  history 
of  the  English  drama. 

Of  the  gynaeceum  of  the  English  stage  I  have  no  more  to  say. 
It  would  be  pleasing  for  a  veteran  play-goer  like  myself  to  pay  his 
tribute  to  the  charm  of  such  delightful  actresses  as  Miss  Irene 
Vanbrugh,  Miss  Marie  Tempest,  Miss  Gladys  Cooper  and  others 
Their  praises  must  be  left  to  be  sung  by  their  own  contemporaries, 
of  whom  I  only  wish  that  I  were  one. 


CHAPTER  X 

RUSSIA 

ONE  day  in  the  month  of  November,  1863,  I  agreed  to  make  an 
exchange  for  six  months  with  Mr.  Locock,  the  second  secre- 
tary of  Embassy  at  St.  Petersburg — it  would  be  an  anachronism 
to  speak  of  "  Petrograd  " — and  by  the  end  of  the  month  I  was  off. 


November  30th. — St.  Petersburg  at  last  !  To  anyone  who 
loves  beautiful  scenery  there  could  hardly  be  a  duller,  gloomier 
journey  than  that  across  the  eternal  stretches  of  moor  and  marsh, 
broken  up  by  forests  of  sad-looking,  stunted  birch  and  fir  trees. 
No  human  habitation  to  be  seen,  no  mankind,  save  at  the  railway 
stations  a  few  peasants,  their  limbs  swathed  in  bandages  of  sack- 
cloth, with  bags  of  the  same  all  over ;  dirty,  unkempt,  poverty- 
stricken,  and  hungry  as  their  fellow-subjects  the  wolves.  Soldiers 
everywhere,  for  the  Polish  insurrection  was  at  its  height,  and  even 
our  train  had  a  military  guard.  Most  of  my  fellow  passengers 
carried  revolvers,  picturesque  but  unprofitable  furniture,  giving  a 
slight  flavour  of  adventurousness  to  the  journey,  though  there  was 
really  no  cause  for  alarm,  no  reason  to  expect  the  least  little  excite- 
ment in  the  way  of  danger.  There  were  too  many  soldiers  about  for 
that.  Thirteen  trains  full  of  them  passed  into  Lithuania  the  day 
before  I  was  there,  adding  to  our  impatience  by  delaying  us  for  an 
hour  and  a  half  when  we  were  longing  with  our  whole  souls  to 
reach  our  goal. 

And  yet,  socially,  it  was  a  pleasant  journey  enough.  I  travelled 
with  William  Harbord,  Lord  Suffield's  brother,  whose  first  appear- 
ance it  was  as  a  Queen's  Messenger.  On  board  the  Calais  boat 

204 


Russia  205 

was  the  Crown  Prince  of  Denmark,  going  home  from  work  at  Oxford, 
who  was  most  kind  to  us,  and  invited  us  to  travel  in  his  carriage 
and  to  dine  with  him  at  Cologne.  We  parted  from  him  at  Hanover 
when  he  branched  off  for  Denmark.  We  were  very  sorry  to  say 
good-bye,  for  he  was  most  gracious  and  friendly.  At  Berlin  I 
had  a  few  hours  between  trains,  which  I  spent  with  that  grand  old 
diplomatist  Sir  Andrew  Buchanan,  who  was  our  Ambassador,  a 
great  gentleman  of  the  old  school,  and  in  the  evening  I  dined  with 
him  before  starting  for  Russia.  Here  again  I  was  in  luck,  for  in 
the  train  I  found  Prince  Alexis  Dolgorouky  and  at  Kowno  there 
were  added  to  us  General  Bechelemicheff  and  his  wife.  He  was 
returning  from  a  command  in  Poland,  and  the  first  intimation  that 
we  had  of  his  presence  at  the  station  was  an  awful  serenade  of 
songs  and  brass  instruments  executed  by  the  band  of  one  of  his 
regiments.  So  we  had  quite  a  merry  party  and  the  time  passed 
cheerfully  enough  inside  the  carriage.  Outside  the  prospect  was 
dismal  to  a  degree,  and  we  shut  our  eyes  to  it.  The  winter's 
snow  had  not  yet  arrived,  and  there  was  nothing  but  slosh  and 
mud  and  misery.  However  : 

"  Be  the  day  weary  or  be  the  day  long, 
At  length  it  ringeth  to  evensong." 

What  a  crowd  it  was  at  the  station  !  Railway  officials,  Custom 
House  officers,  police,  hotel  touts,  droschky  drivers,  indescribables 
of  all  sorts ;  swearing,  chaffing,  abusing,  howling ;  each  one  straining 
his  own  lungs  and  the  hearers'  ears  as  nearly  to  bursting  point  as 
possible,  until,  official  patience  being  exhausted,  a  police  officer 
wielding  a  stout  cudgel,  with  a  few  blows  indiscriminately  ad- 
ministered about  the  heads  of  the  rabble,  sent  them  all  flying  in 
various  directions,  and  at  last  the  Embassy  servant  who  had  been 
sent  to  meet  me  was  able  to  pilot  me  to  a  carriage  and  I  once  more 
tasted  freedom. 

It  was  a  lovely  moonlit  night,  close  upon  ten  o'clock,  and  the 
town  looked  perfectly  beautiful.  The  canals  and  palaces  and 
streets  ablaze  with  light,  the  river  reflecting  a  thousand  lamps. 
The  domes  and  spires  of  the  churches,  gilt  and  silvered,  all  sparkling 
with  frost  as  if  they  had  been  sprinkled  with  diamonds  and  precious 


206  Memories 

stones.  Everything  different  to  anything  that  I  had  ever  seen 
before,  all  new,  fresh  and  delightful — the  delicious  keen  air  driving 
away  the  last  memory  of  the  train  with  its  stuffiness  and  heat  and 
dirty,  oily  smells — a  never-to-be-forgotten  drive  breathing  new 
life  into  me  and  just  putting  me  into  that  frame  of  mind  which 
fits  one  to  receive  the  sharpest  enjoyment. 

Before  doing  anything  else,  travel-stained,  untidy  and  un- 
comfortable as  I  was,  I  had  to  go  to  the  Embassy  to  deliver  the 
despatches  which  I  was  carrying.  For  a  wonder,  Lord  and  Lady 
Napier  were  neither  dining  out  nor  entertaining  at  home,  and  the 
Ambassador  had  given  orders  that  I  was  to  be  shown  up  at  once. 
Rather  an  ordeal  to  have  to  face  the  great  man,  upon  whom  a  first 
impression  may  mean  so  much,  without  even  casting  off  the  slough 
of  four  days  and  nights  of  travel !  However,  Lord  and  Lady 
Napier  put  me  at  my  ease  at  once.  The  diplomatist  abroad  is 
always  hungry  for  the  last  news,  the  latest  piece  of  gossip,  social  or 
political,  and  my  chief  kept  me  talking  in  the  friendliest  way. 
When  at  last  it  was  time  to  say  good  night,  he  called  me  back  and 
said : 

"  By  the  by,  tell  your  people  at  home  to  send  you  all  letters 
in  the  Foreign  Office  bag — none  by  the  Post  Office,  where  all  our 
letters  are  opened." 

"  Surely,"  I  said,  "  they  would  not  dream  of  opening  the  corre- 
spondence of  so  humble  a  person  as  myself." 

"  Don't  be  too  sure  of  that,"  broke  in  Lady  Napier.  "  The 
other  day  my  children's  governess  received  two  letters  by  the  same 
post  from  different  parts  of  England.  Each  contained  a  photo- 
graph. The  two  letters  came  in  one  envelope,  the  two  photographs 
in  the  other  !  " 

As  I  drove  away  from  the  Embassy  I  could  think  of  nothing 
but  the  great  charm  of  my  Chief  and  Chiefess.  She  was  certainly 
one  of  the  most  fascinating  women  I  ever  had  the  good  fortune  to 
meet.  Handsome,  clever,  agreeable,  well  read,  very  dignified, 
beautifully  dressed,  she  was  delightful  to  look  at,  delightful  to 
listen  to  ;  the  type  of  what  an  ambassadress  should  be,  doing 
the  honours  of  the  Queen's  house  on  the  Neva  like  the  great  lady 
that  she  was.  She  had  at  that  time  not  very  good  health  and 


O  4 

^  oo 

D  - 

CQ  O 

2  I 

uj  s 

H  -- 

UJ  « 

»•  s 

H  - 

K  ^ 

uj  i 

to  •§ 

3  !; 

0  | 

1  8 

fe  I 


Russia  207 

the  climate  of  Russia  did  not  suit  her  ;  but  she  was  none  the  less 
a  noble  helpmeet  to  His  Excellency  ;  to  all  of  us  she  was  so 
gracious  and  kind,  so  thoughtful  and  considerate,  that  we  wor- 
shipped her.  I  reverence  her  memory.  As  for  Lord  Napier,  I 
don't  think  that  anybody  who  ever  served  under  him  would  say 
that  it  would  be  possible  to  have  a  kinder  or  a  better  chief.  He 
was  undeniably  a  most  astute  diplomatist,  full  of  resource,  a  master 
of  the  art  of  ingratiating  himself  with  those  who  came  into  contact 
with  him. 

The  Russians,  from  the  Emperor  downward,  all  liked  him,  and 
he  was  able  to  put  through,  by  the  stern  force  of  pleasing,  many 
a  tangled  piece  of  business  which  would  have  been  perhaps  an 
impossibility  to  others.  I  shall  cite  one  notable  instance  later  on. 
In  society  he  was  popular  wherever  he  went.  He  was  an  admirable 
raconteur  and  always  a  kindly  listener,  possessing  the  art  of 
drawing  out  men  so  as  to  make  them  show  at  their  best,  and  they 
were  duly  grateful.  His  ready  wit  and  power  of  repartee  were 
enhanced  by  the  most  infectious  twinkle  of  his  eye  ;  he  was  one 
of  those  rare  men  who  laugh  with  their  eyes,  and  to  me  that 
quality  is  irresistible.  He  was  young  for  an  ambassador  (only 
forty- two  years  old  when  he  reached  that  rank  in  1861),  but  looked 
older  than  his  years,  and  even  in  his  earliest  days  could  never 
have  been  anything  but  a  grand  seigneur.  Quite  apart  from  the 
joy  of  living  in  intimacy  with  such  a  man,  any  young  diplomatist 
who  might  be  attached  to  his  Embassy  had  a  rare  chance  to  learn 
his  business  under  so  able  a  chief. 

It  was  a  piece  of  good  fortune  to  find  my  old  friend  John  Lumley, 
afterwards  Ambassador  at  Rome,  and  created  Lord  Savile,  estab- 
lished here  as  First  Secretary.  He  was  very  popular  in  Russian 
society,  as  he  was  everywhere  else,  and  it  was  a  great  advantage 
to  have  him  as  sponsor.  He  was  most  kind  and  introduced  me 
to  many  of  the  pleasantest  people  in  St.  Petersburg.  The  day 
after  my  arrival  he  drove  me  about,  and  took  me  to  see  several 
of  his  friends.  Among  others  a  lovely  young  widow — only  twenty- 
four  years  of  age — Countess  Koucheleff-Bezbarodko,  who  lived 
in  a  palace  the  magnificence  of  which  I  have  never  seen  surpassed. 
It  would  have  been  difficult  to  determine  which  was  the  more 


zo8  Memories 

beautiful,  the  lady  or  her  home.  The  casket  was  worthy  of  the 
jewel,  and  that  is  the  best  that  can  be  said.  She  afterwards  married 
the  eldest  son  of  Prince  Suvoroff,  the  Governor-General  of  St.  Peters- 
burg. But  it  is  idle  to  expatiate  upon  the  grandeur  and  luxury 
of  these  great  palaces ;  they  are  a  matter  of  common  knowledge, 
and  I  shall  write  no  more  about  them,  though  of  the  kindness  and 
friendliness  with  which  we  were  greeted  in  them  one  would  hardly 
weary  of  talking.  The  Russian  noble  has  in  perfection  the  greatest 
of  all  the  qualities  which  go  to  make  up  the  character  of  a  grand 
seigneur,  that  of  making  his  guests,  however  humble  they  may 
be,  feel  at  their  ease.  That  is  what  makes  society  in  this  brilliant 
city  so  pleasant. 

To  English  people  the  familiarity  of  the  Russians  with  English 
literature  has  always  made  a  great  bond  of  sympathy.  A  new 
novel  by  Dickens  or  Thackeray  was  looked  forward  to  with  almost 
as  much  excitement  as  it  was  in  London,  and  the  English  classics 
have  become  the  common  property  of  all.  I  was  not  a  little 
astonished  when  on  my  being  presented  to  Count  Orloff  Davidoff, 
one  of  the  great  nobles,  he  asked  me  what  relation  I  was  to  the 
historian  of  Greece.  He  had  studied  at  Edinburgh  University. 
When  poor  Thackeray  died  at  the  end  of  the  year  the  consterna- 
tion and  sorrow  were  most  touching.  He  was  one  of  the  last  men 
with  whom  I  spoke  before  leaving  home. 

On  the  evening  before  I  left  London  for  St.  Petersburg  I  was 
up  in  a  box  at  the  Promenade  Concert.  Down  below  I  saw 
Thackeray's  gigantic  figure,  his  white  head  towering  above  the 
crowd,  and  I  ran  down  to  bid  him  farewell.  He  had  always  been 
very  kind  to  me  as  he  was  to  all  young  people,  and  I  was  naturally 
greatly  flattered  and  fascinated  by  his  charm — for  he  could  be 
very  charming  when  he  chose,  though,  like  his  great  rival  Dickens, 
and  even  Addison  as  Pope  tells  us,  he  resented  anything  like  being 
drawn  out  in  the  company  of  strangers.  I  several  times  met  him 
at  dinner  at  Millais',  when  he  and  I  would  be  the  only  guests, 
making  up  a  quartette  with  the  genial,  handsome  host  and  his 
no  less  handsome  wife.  After  dinner  Mrs.  Millais  used  to  leave 
us,  and  we  three  men  adjourned  to  the  great  studio  where  we 
might  smoke  in  armchair  comfort. 


Russia  209 

Thackeray  would  have  been  very  handsome  but  for  the  broken 
nose  which  he  himself  so  often  caricatured,  but  which  with  his 
round  face  gave  him  a  sort  of  cherubic  look,  like  one  of  Raphael's 
winged  heads,  rather  robbing  it  of  its  masculine  vigour  and  seeming 
almost  absurdly  in  contrast  with  his  great  size  and  strong  nature. 
It  was  delightful  to  see  him  beaming  behind  his  spectacles  with 
his  long  legs  stretched  out  in  front  of  him,  the  picture  of  placid 
content,  and  to  listen  to  his  words,  kindly,  witty,  full  of  old-world 
anecdote,  told  in  the  English  of  Addison — the  fruit  of  his  studies 
for  Esmond  and  his  lectures  on  the  eighteenth  century  Essayists — 
with  just  a  little  delightful  spice  of  good-natured  cynicism  which 
was  as  cayenne  pepper  animating  the  olla  podrida  of  his  talk. 
Sometimes  he  was  so  gay  and  so  young  that  he  seemed  just  what 
he  must  have  been  when  he  called  out  "  adsum  "  at  the  Charter 
House.  Thackeray  was  very  fond  of  Millais.  He  admired  his 
art,  and  the  great  painter's  large,  honest,  bluff  and  rough  nature, 
his  innocence  of  all  humbug  or  affectation,  which  Thackeray 
loathed  above  all  things,  appealed  to  him.  The  two  were  per- 
fectly happy  together,  so  in  that  studio  Thackeray  was  at  his  best. 
And  what  a  best  it  was  ! 

Less  than  a  month  after  I  reached  St.  Petersburg  the  news  that 
Thackeray  was  dead  was  flashed  along  the  wires  to  a  capital  where 
he  was  almost  as  well  known  by  those  who  had  never  seen  him  as 
he  was  in  his  own  familiar  Kensington.  I  had  been  greatly  struck 
by  his  popularity  in  Russia,  and  had  looked  forward  to  some  day 
telling  him  how  great  was  his  greatness  in  that  land  of  cold  snow 
and  warm  hearts.  The  fatal  24th  of  December  robbed  me  of  that 
pleasure.  It  created  a  sad  gap  among  his  friends,  who  loved  him 
as  dearly  for  himself  as  others  did  for  his  work. 

The  last  time  I  saw  Millais  was  in  February,  1896,  a  few  days 
after  Leighton's  funeral.  He  stopped  me  in  St.  James's  Street, 
and  we  had  a  little  talk,  chiefly  about  the  friend  whom  we  had 
so  recently  lost.  He  was  looking  well  and  hearty,  but  was  closely 
muffled  up.  The  terrible  disease  in  his  throat  made  him  almost 
inaudible.  He  spoke  in  a  hoarse  whisper,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
summer  one  more  President  of  the  Royal  Academy  was  carried 
to  St.  Paul's  Cathedral.  The  careers  of  the  two  men  were  a  curious 
VOL.  i  14 


zio  Memories 

sequel  to  the  prophecy  which  Thackeray  wrote  to  Millais  from 
Rome  in  1852 :  "I  have  seen  in  Rome  a  versatile  young  dog  who 
will  run  you  hard  for  the  Presidentship  some  day  !  " 

A  few  days  after  my  arrival  I  received  a  summons  to  the  Winter 
Palace  to  be  presented  to  the  Emperor.  The  ceremony  was  very 
different  from  the  march  past  of  many  hundred  men,  which  con- 
stitutes a  levee  at  home.  It  was  rather  an  ordeal,  for  I  had  to 
go  by  myself  with  no  tutelary  deity  in  the  shape  of  an  ambassador 
to  present  me  and  show  me  the  ropes,  as  is  done  at  most  other 
courts.  I  found  a  batch  of  eleven  other  victims  of  all  nations, 
who  had  been  summoned  for  the  same  purpose,  and  we  were  shown 
into  a  rather  shabbily-furnished  room  decorated  with  a  few  bad 
pictures  of  reviews — altogether  a  violent  contrast  to  the  magnifi- 
cence of  the  staircase  and  corridors  through  which  we  were  led 
by  servants  in  gorgeous  apparel,  with  soldiers  in  splendid 
uniforms  mounting  guard.  Presently  the  Tsar  came  in,  a  tall, 
imposing  figure  with  a  very  kindly  face  and  genial  manner. 

He  called  up  each  of  us  in  turn,  and  when  we  had  been  presented 
by  a  chamberlain  he  had  something  amiable  and  pleasant  to  greet 
us  with.  Certainly  the  Emperor  was  a  born  king  of  men.  His 
was  a  royalty  about  which  there  could  be  no  doubt.  His  smile 
was  charming,  but  when  he  was  displeased  he  knew  how  to  show  it. 
I  saw  both  smile  and  frown  that  morning. 

When  it  came  to  my  turn  to  be  named  he  asked  me  where  I  had 
been  educated.  I  told  him  at  Eton  and  Oxford. 

"  Ah,"  said  His  Majesty,  "  j'ai  ete  a  Oxford.  L'orateur  public 
a  meme  prononce  un  discours  en  Latin  en  mon  honneur." 

"  Dont  je  suis  sur,"  I  answered,  "  que  votre  Majeste  n'a  pas 
compris  un  traitre  mot " 

The  clouds  gathered  on  Jupiter's  brow  and  there  was  thunder 
in  the  air.  "  Who,"  they  said  as  plainly  as  speech  itself,  "  is 
this  whipper-snapper  who  dares  to  say  that  I,  the  Emperor  of  all 
the  Russias.  am  an  ignoramus  that  does  not  understand  Latin  ?  " 

— "  A  cause  de  notre  prononciation  barbare,"  I  continued.  The 
clouds  were  dispersed,  the  sun  shone  again — all  was  well  with  the 
world.  The  Emperor  laughed  heartily  at  the  expense  of  the 


Russia  211 

public  orator,  and  his  "  prononciation  barbare,"  and  kept  me 
talking  for  some  few  minutes.  He  was  always  very  gracious  after- 
wards when  I  met  him  at  any  entertainment,  and  never  failed  to 
give  me  a  friendly  little  nod  or  word  of  recognition. 

The  surroundings  at  the  presentation  to  the  Empress  were  far 
more  imposing.  It  took  place  at  night  in  the  great  gilt  drawing- 
room  inside  the  White  ball-room  where  we  assembled,  about 
fifteen  of  us.  The  rooms  were  lighted  by  innumerable  candles, 
and  no  light  gives  such  a  look  of  magnificence.  The  liveries  and 
uniforms  were,  of  course,  brilliant,  and  the  Empress'  negroes  in 
blue  and  gold  jackets  with  wide  oriental  trousers  looked  as  if 
they  might  have  been  the  personal  attendants  of  the  Caliph 
Haroun  Al  Raschid  himself.  We  had  to  wait  some  time  before 
we  were  wanted,  for  the  wives  of  the  Italian  and  Prussian  Ministers 
had  to  be  received  in  audience  before  us.  The  Empress  was  a 
tall,  graceful  lady  with  a  sweet  expression  and  most  charming 
manners.  She  looked  very  delicate  and,  indeed,  had  bad  health, 
suffering,  I  fear,  a  great  deal ;  it  is  not  everybody  who  can  make  a 
stand  against  the  climate  of  St.  Petersburg ;  to  her  I  was  told 
that  it  was  poisonous. 

It  must  be  rather  a  trial,  even  for  an  Empress  who  has  gained 
experience  after  years  of  such  functions,  to  walk  round  a  circle 
of  men,  seen  for  the  first  time,  and  be  so  ready-witted  as  to  say 
something  pleasant  to  each.  But  how  well  she  did  it !  Every 
man  present  was  under  the  charm.  She  had  heard  of  the  letter 
which  I  brought  from  Countess  Apponyi  to  Princess  Kotchoubey 
(it  seemed  as  if  everything  was  known  to  everybody  in  this  wonder- 
ful capital).  She  knew  Countess  Apponyi  well  and  asked  a  great 
deal  after  her  ;  she  also  talked  a  good  deal  about  the  Prince  and 
Princess  of  Wales.  Her  grace  made  conversation  quite  easy, 
and  after  a  few  minutes  she  made  a  pretty  little  bow  and  passed 
on  to  the  next  man. 

The  Empress  Marie  was  a  Princess  of  Hesse,  daughter  of  Duke 
Louis  II.,  and  her  marriage  with  the  Emperor  was  a  pure 
love-match.  Indeed  it  was  an  open  secret  that  the  Emperor 
Nicholas  was  not  best  pleased  when  he  heard  of  the  engagement  ; 
he  had  looked  for  a  more  brilliant  marriage  for  his  son  and  heir 
VOL.  i  14* 


212  Memories 

My  father,  who  was  at  Frankfort  at  the  time,  saw  the  great,  hand- 
some Tsar  arrive,  and  drive  out  to  make  acquaintance  with  his 
future  daughter-in-law  ;  he  was  looking  as  stern  and  as  dark  as 
Erebus.  He  came  back  from  the  visit,  his  face  wreathed  in  smiles. 
The  sweet  Princess,  then  in  the  heyday  of  her  youth  and  beauty, 
had  conquered.  She  had  caught  the  dreaded  potentate  in  the 
network  of  a  charm  which  was  irresistible,  and  which  remained 
a  precious  possession  to  the  end  of  time,  for  it  was  something  that 
the  cruel  climate  which  tarnished  the  freshness  of  her  beauty  could 
not  impair,  much  less  destroy. 


In  writing  these  sketches  I  have  no  pretension  to  dabble  in 
history  ;  for  that  I  am  neither  fitted  nor  documented.  All  1 
desire  is  to  place  on  record  some  memories  at  first  hand  of  certain 
remarkable  people  with  whom  I  have  been  brought  in  contact. 
In  order,  however,  to  understand  the  state  of  feeling  in  Russia 
at  the  time  with  which  I  am  dealing,  it  is  impossible  not  to  allude, 
however  briefly,  to  the  Polish  insurrection  of  which  the  influence 
seemed  to  pervade  everything.  Poland  was  in  the  mouths  of 
all  men — Poland  and  the  attitude  of  England. 

The  year  1863  had  opened  grimly  enough  for  Poland.  The 
Tsar's  brother,  the  Grand  Duke  Constantine  Nicolaievitch,  was 
Viceroy  at  Warsaw,  and  the  Government  had  intelligence  to  the 
effect  that  the  city  was  a  hotbed  of  conspiracies  and  intrigues, 
and  that  an  insurrection  might  be  expected  to  take  place  at  any 
moment.  To  prevent  this  calamity  drastic  measures  were 
adopted.  A  good  many  years  earlier  the  Emperor  Nicholas  had 
abolished  military  conscription  in  Poland  ;  it  was  now  determined 
to  revive  it,  but  under  conditions  which  would  enable  the  Govern- 
ment to  throttle  the  revolutionary  movement  by  ridding  the 
country  of  all  dangerous  men.  The  old  practice  of  drawing  the 
conscripts  by  lot  was  abandoned,  and  the  authorities  were  in- 
vested with  the  power  of  arbitrarily  choosing  the  men  who  should 
be  taken  for  service. 

Nor  was  this  the  only  hardship,  for  the  conscription  being 
limited  to  the  towns,  Poland  was  to  be  robbed  of  its  most  capable 


Russia  213 

men,  trade  and  business  must  be  paralysed,  and  only  the  most 
ignorant  and  valueless  dregs  of  the  population  left  behind.  Who 
was  responsible  for  this  wicked  and  cruel  policy  I  never  heard. 
It  was  universally  condemned  abroad,  and  not  a  few  Russians 
recognized  the  folly  of  it.  Among  the  Poles,  the  Marquis  Wielo- 
polski,  a  former  governor-general,  was  the  only  man  who  supported 
it.  No  man  condemned  the  proceedings  of  the  Government  more 
strongly  than  Lord  Napier.  In  a  despatch  to  the  Foreign  Office 
of  January  the  26th  he  described  them  as  in  fact  "  a  design  to 
make  a  clean  sweep  of  the  revolutionary  youth  of  Poland  ;  to 
shut  up  the  most  energetic  and  dangerous  spirits  in  the  restraints 
of  the  Russian  army  ;  it  was  simply  a  plan,"  he  said,  "  to  kidnap 
the  opposition  and  carry  it  off  to  Siberia  or  the  Caucasus." 

On  the  evening  of  the  I4th  of  January  the  Grand  Duke  signed 
the  decree,  and  during  that  night  houses  were  broken  into  and 
2,500  men  were  carried  off  by  press-gangs  of  police  and  soldiers. 
Where  the  young  men  who  had  been  marked  down  were  not  forth- 
coming their  parents  were  taken  and  held  as  pledges. 

Lord  Napier's  appreciation  of  the  decree  exactly  represented 
the  feeling  with  which  it  was  received  at  Warsaw.  The  Poles 
were  lashed  to  fury,  and  the  torch  of  revolution  was  lighted.  A 
so-called  Central  Committee  was  formed,  which  was  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  secret  society  issuing  its  orders  for  murder  and 
arson,  orders  faithfully  obeyed,  with  every  aggravation  that  the 
ingenuity  of  cruelty  could  suggest. 

The  mystery  of  this  modern  Vehmgericht  was  well  kept.  All 
the  cunning  and  vigilance  of  the  Russian  police  was  at  fault.  No 
man  knew  who  were  its  members,  where  they  met,  or  what  was 
the  machinery  with  which  they  worked.  Death,  swift  and  secret, 
followed  upon  their  decisions.  Their  blows  fell  in  darkness,  their 
vengeance  was  assured,  and  none  could  tell  who  would  be  the 
next  victim.  Only  the  murderer  was  safe,  and  he  only  so  long  as 
he  continued  to  murder  without  question.  To  the  peasants  a 
big  bribe  was  held  out — such  a  bribe  as  is  not  unknown  in  history 
elsewhere.  Here  is  the  proclamation  of  the  Central  Committee: 

Art.  i.     Land   held   under   any    title   whatsoever,    corvee 


2I4  Memories 

rent  or  otherwise,  by  small  farmers,  together  with  all  build- 
ings thereon,  becomes  from  this  date  the  freehold  property 
of  the  holder,  without  any  obligation  of  rent  or  otherwise, 
except  the  duty  of  paying  taxes  and  serving  the  country. 

Art.  2.  The  former  proprietors  will  receive  compensation 
from  the  national  funds  by  means  of  Government  stock. 

Art.  3.  The  amount  of  compensation  and  the  nature  of 
the  stock  will  be  settled  by  separate  decrees. 

Art.  4.  All  ukases,  laws,  etc.,  published  by  the  usurping 
Government  on  the  subject  of  peasant  leases  are  declared 
null  and  void. 

Art.  5.  The  present  decree  applies  not  only  to  private 
estates,  but  also  to  Crown  lands,  lands  bestowed  by  the  Crown, 
Church  property,  etc.* 

Such  an  edict  as  this,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the  crimes  and 
horrors  for  which  the  Central  Committee  was  responsible,  led  to 
reprisals  which  were  hardly  less  terrible  than  the  deeds  which 
they  avenged.  I  do  not  propose  to  go  into  any  detail  in  regard 
to  the  insurrection.  The  appointment  of  Langiewicz  as  dictator, 
his  abandonment  of  the  cause  in  a  way  which  suggested  something 
very  like  cowardice,  his  submission  to  the  Austrians  at  Cracow, 
the  rebel  bands  hiding  in  the  forests,  the  destruction  of  railways, 
the  attempt  to  poison  Wielopolski  and  his  family,  all  the  inci- 
dents and  tragedies  of  a  great  rebellion,  make  picturesque  reading, 
but  it  must  be  sought  elsewhere. 

It  was  a  reign  of  terror  in  Poland,  and  above  all  in  Lithuania, 
where  General  Muravieff  in  his  headquarters  at  Vilna  ruled  with 
a  rod  of  redhot  iron.  The  indignation  of  Europe  was  aroused ; 
but  it  was  largely  an  ignorant  indignation,  for  whereas  the  English 
and  French  newspapers  were  generally  fed  with  stories  against 
the  Russians,  there  was  complete  silence  as  to  the  provocation 
on  the  other  side.  Mr.  Sutherland  Edwards,  the  Times  corre- 
spondent at  Warsaw,  a  most  competent  and  above  all  a  most 
just  witness,  told  me  that  there  was  much  exaggeration  and  much 
invention  about  the  information  which  was  sold  to  the  foreign 

*  "Annual  Register,'*  1863. 


Russia  215 

press  by  certain  travelling  Jews  of  the  lower  sort.  News  to  be 
marketable  must  be  such  as  would  tell  against  the  Government. 
Edwards  had  no  reason  to  take  sides  with  the  Russians,  for  he 
had  just  been  turned  out  of  Warsaw,  bag  and  baggage,  at  twenty- 
four  hours'  notice,  but  he  was  far  too  honest  a  politician  to  allow 
any  personal  treatment  of  himself  to  influence  him  in  discussing 
a  great  question  of  national  importance  ;  it  was  a  mistake  to 
deal  with  him  in  so  ungenerous  a  fashion,  but  it  was  only  one 
among  many  mistakes. 

There  were  many  Russians,  loyal  subjects  to  the  Tsar  and 
enthusiastically  devoted  to  their  own  country,  who  recognized 
and  deplored  those  mistakes.  Above  all,  these  just  men  viewed 
with  indignation  the  barbarous  methods  of  General  Muravieff, 
the  man  who,  above  all  others,  was  responsible  for  the  feeling 
aroused  in  the  rest  of  Europe.  Prince  Suvoroff,  the  Governor- 
General  of  St.  Petersburg,  a  great  friend  and  favourite  of  the 
Emperor,  spoke  out  bravely  about  this.  A  subscription  had 
been  set  on  foot  to  present  Muravieff  with  a  statue  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  in  silver,  for  which  the  Metropolitan  found  the 
inscription,  "  Thy  name  is  Victory."  The  subject  was 
being  discussed  at  Tsarskoe  Selo  at  the  Imperial  table,  when 
Prince  Suvoroff  declared  aloud  that  "  he  could  not  understand 
men  giving  a  blessed  image  to  a  hangman."  These  bold  words, 
uttered  unrebuked  in  the  presence  of  the  Tsar,  created  a  great 
sensation,  and  induced  many  men  to  speak  their  minds  more 
openly  than  they  had  up  to  then  dared  to  do.  It  showed  also 
that  the  Emperor — essentially  a  good  and  humane  ruler,  as  he 
proved  to  be  over  and  over  again — while  determined  to  put  down 
the  rebellion,  abhorred  the  methods  that  were  being  adopted, 
otherwise  Prince  Suvoroff's  speech  would  not  have  been  passed 
over.  The  downfall  of  Muravieff  was  considered  to  be  imminent. 
He  was  not  recalled,  however,  until  April,  1865,  being  raised  to 
the  rank  of  Count,  and  he  died  the  following  year  at  his  country 
place,  Surez,  near  Luga.  A  bronze  statue  o'f  him  was  erected 
in  Vilna  in  1898. 

Meanwhile  Edwards,  whose  banishment  from  Warsaw  had 
removed  a  man  who  was  truly  desirous  of  sending  home  a  fair 


216  Memories 

and  honest  account  of  affairs,  thus  giving  a  free  hand  to  more 
unscrupulous  writers,  was  being  shadowed  by  spies  who  took 
note  of  all  his  visitors.  My  Russian  master,  who  also  gave  him 
lessons — a  mild,  harmless  little  man,  who  had  taught  the  great 
Bismarck — was  followed  home  one  day  as  a  very  suspicious  char- 
acter. It  would  have  been  laughable  if  it  had  not  been  so  sad. 
All  this  trouble  taken  to  hinder  and  annoy  a  man  whose  sole  object 
was  to  check  the  prosperity  of  lies  !  These  flourished  accordingly. 

Political  crises  are  always  fruitful  hi  exaggeration  and  false- 
hood. Never,  perhaps,  were  they  so  rife  as  during  the  Polish 
insurrection  ;  the  country  was  wild  and  inaccessible,  information 
vague  and  uncertain,  chaffered  as  an  article  of  trade  by  news- 
pedlars,  carried  from  great  distances  and  losing  nothing  by  the 
way ;  horrors  were  invented  for  hungry  listeners — and  there  was 
no  one  to  contradict.  Truth  remained  hiding  at  the  very  lowest 
depths  of  her  well.  Take,  for  instance,  the  trial  of  Count  Zamoyski, 
about  which  the  English  newspapers  were  greatly  excited,  one 
paper  going  as  far  as  to  say  that  he  had  been  condemned  to  death 
on  the  strength  of  confessions  extracted  from  him  by  torture  whilst 
he  was  in  prison.  As  a  matter  of  fact  no  man  could  have  had 
a  fairer  trial.  He  was  found  guilty  of  rebellion — as  to  that  there 
could  be  no  denial.  It  was  abundantly  proved  that  he  had  been 
a  member  of  the  Central  Committee  and  privy  to  all  its  so-called 
decrees  and  ordinances.  He  was  sentenced  to  banishment  from 
Poland,  took  up  his  residence  in  France,  and  finally  went  to  Cracow, 
where  he  died  in  his  bed  at  the  good  old  age  of  seventy-four.  No 
milder  sentence  could  well  have  been  passed  upon  him. 

As  for  the  stories  of  torture  which  were  freely  put  about,  most 
searching  investigations  on  the  spot  proved  that  there  was  no 
shadow  of  foundation  for  them.  Great  severities  were  practised, 
especially  in  Lithuania  under  General  Muravieff ;  floggings  as 
judicial  punishments  in  execution  of  sentences  officially  pro- 
nounced were  frequent ;  but  no  evidence  was  ever  produced  to 
show  that  flogging  had  been  used  for  the  purpose  of  extracting  evi- 
dence, and  as  for  instruments  of  torture  they  simply  did  not  exist. 

The  Poles  were  past-masters  in  the  art  of  exciting  dramatic 
emotion  and  surrounding  base  crimes  with  a  political  halo.  Some 


Russia  21- 

scoundrel  would  be  condemned  to  death  for  murder,  rapine,  arson 
or  some  other  abomination.  Immediately  he  was  glorified  into 
a  political  hero  and  martyr.  Such  canonizations  are  not  unknown 
elsewhere.  All  Warsaw  turned  out  in  deep  mourning  to  do  him 
honour,  and  witness  the  sacrifice.  Ladies  of  the  highest  rank, 
robed  and  veiled  in  crape,  weeping  bitterly,  knelt  on  the  public 
place  to  offer  up  prayers  for  the  soul  of  the  victim.  Impartial 
men  with  strong  nerves  told  me  that  they  had  been  so  affected 
by  such  a  scene  that  they  forgot  for  the  moment  that  they  were 
witnessing  the  just  expiation  of  a  hideous  crime  ;  half  stupefied 
as  in  a  dream,  they  saw  the  death  of  a  Christian  martyr.  The 
excellence  of  the  stage  management  had  its  effect.  Popular  resent- 
ment against  the  Government  was  stimulated,  and,  what  was  still 
more  important  to  the  agitators,  the  kind  hearts  of  foreign  corre- 
spondents were  touched,  so  that  the  most  harrowing  stories  were 
launched  out  east  and  west,  north  and  south,  stirring  animosities 
and  calling  up  political  hatred  in  all  its  bitterness. 

The  excitement  aroused  in  England  and  France  amounted  to 
intoxication  ;  but  it  was  an  uninformed  excitement,  for  it  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  there  was  not  one  man  in  ten  thousand 
who  had  taken  the  pains  to  read  up  the  causes  that  had  led  up 
to  the  insurrection  and  its  repression,  and  still  fewer  who  had 
any  knowledge  of  the  complicated  history  of  the  deadly  feud 
between  the  two  races,  a  feud  which  had  lasted  for  centuries. 

The  late  Lord  Salisbury  was  one  of  those  few.  In  April,  1863, 
he  published  an  article  on  Poland,  which  he  followed  up  in  the 
same  month  of  the  following  year  by  another  paper  on  Foreign 
Policy.  Both  were  republished  in  book  form  by  Mr.  Murray  in 
1905.  The  first  article  gives  a  short  and  clear  history  of  the 
whole  question  ;  the  second  is  a  scathing  condemnation  of  Lord 
Russell's  treatment  of  international  affairs,  especially  in  the  two 
cases  of  Poland  and  the  Danish  duchies.  Considering  what  has 
taken  place  since  that  time,  the  outcome  of  Lord  Russell's  policy, 
every  student  of  foreign  politics  should  make  himself  acquainted 
with  those  two  articles  written  by  a  great  master. 

I  have  shown  how  numbers  of  generously-minded  Russians 
disavowed  and  repudiated  the  methods  of  repression  which  had 


2i8  Memories 

been  adopted,  especially  in  Lithuania.  None  the  less  was  all 
Russia  of  one  mind  as  to  the  imperative  necessity  of  putting  down 
the  insurrection.  Every  thinking  man  knew  that  it  was  a  matter 
of  life  and  death  to  his  country  ;  in  a  despatch  from  which  I  shall 
quote  presently  Prince  Gortchakoff  showed  that  very  clearly.  If 
the  Poles  were  to  become  dominant  there  would  be  a  repetition  in 
provinces  largely  inhabited  by  Russians  of  the  horrors  which  took 
place  two  centuries  earlier  when  they  were  in  possession  of  Moscow, 
and  of  which  a  ioretaste  had  already  been  given  in  the  murders 
and  attempts  to  murder  of  the  last  few  months.  Austrian  Poland 
and  Prussian  Poland  must  be  drawn  into  the  furnace  and  a  general 
conflagration  ensue. 

But  Lord  Russell  "  cared  for  none  of  these  things."  Here  wa ,  a 
rare  opportunity  for  him  to  give  effect  to  his  favourite  policy  of 
"  meddle  and  muddle  "  (I  do  not  know  who  invented  the  phrase 
in  his  honour,  but  how  good  it  was  !)  and  he  availed  himself  of  it 
freely. 

The  state  of  public  feeling  in  England  and  France  fully  justified 
a  friendly  intercession  by  the  Governments  of  both  countries,  pray- 
ing the  Tsar  to  exercise  his  clemency  on  behalf  of  the  rebellious 
Poles.  But  it  did  not  justify  Lord  Russell  in  adopting  the  hectoring 
language  which  he  used,  language  not  only  reading  Russia  a  lesson 
as  to  how  she  should  govern  in  her  own  dominions,  but  even  convey- 
ing threats  as  to  what  might  happen  if  his  advice  were  not  followed. 
His  conduct  of  the  affair  not  only  infuriated  the  Russians,  but  also 
alienated  the  French  Government,  who  were  greatly  displeased  at 
having  been  brought  into  a  ridiculous  position. 

On  the  2nd  of  March,  1863,  Lord  Russell  wrote  a  despatch  to 
Lord  Napier,  of  course  for  presentation  to  Prince  Gortchakoff,  in 
which,  on  the  strength  of  the  fact  that  "  the  Kingdom  o  Poland 
was  constituted  and  placed  in  connexion  with  the  Russian  Empire 
by  the  Treaty  of  1815,  to  which  Great  Britain  was  a  contracting 
party,"  he  claimed  the  right  of  Great  Britain  "  to  express  its  opinion 
upon  the  events  now  taking  place,  '  and  in  rather  slipshod  language, 
such  as  might  be  adopted  by  a  schoolboy  mediating  in  a  football 
squabble,  went  on  to  offer  his  amiable  advice  to  the  Emperor: 
"  Why  should  not  His  Imperial  Majesty,  whose  benevolence  is 


Russia  219 

generally  and  cheerfully  acknowledged,  put  an  end  to  this  bloody 
conflict,"  etc.,  etc. 

On  the  loth  of  April  he  returned  to  the  charge,  in  a  despatch  the 
phraseology  of  which  Lord  Salisbury  described  as  being  "  as  menac- 
ing as  will  often  be  found  in  despatches  even  of  a  professedly  hostile 
character,"  once  more  insisting  that  the  Emperor's  position  as 
regards  the  Poles  was  due  to  the  grace  and  favour  of  the  Treaty  of 
Vienna,  and  quite  different  to  what  it  would  have  been  had  His 
Majesty  held  Poland  as  part  of  the  original  dominions  of  the  Crown, 
or  if  he  had  acquired  it  by  the  unassisted  success  of  his  army  and 
unsanctioned  by  the  consent  of  any  other  Power,  etc.,  etc.  The 
formal  declaration  that  Russia  had  broken  her  treaty  engagements, 
the  intimation  that  she  had  not  fulfilled  her  duties  of  comity  as  a 
member  of  the  community  of  nations,  the  distinct  statement  that 
the  course  she  was  pursuing  was  dangerous  to  the  general  peace  of 
Europe,  "  and  might  under  possible  circumstances  produce  compli- 
cations of  the  most  serious  nature — all  these  expressions,  inter- 
preted by  diplomatic  usage,  were  simple  threats  of  war."* 

These  threats  were  accentuated  by  a  conversation  which  Lord 
Russell  reported  as  having  taken  place  between  himself  and  Baron 
Brunnow,  the  Russian  Ambassador.  Baron  Brunnow  said  there 
was  one  question  which  he  felt  entitled  to  ask,  and  that  was  whether 
the  communication  Her  Majesty's  Government  were  about  to  make 
at  St.  Petersburg  was  of  a  pacific  nature.  I  replied  that  it  was,  but 
that  as  I  did  not  wish  to  mislead  him  I  must  say  something  more. 
Her  Majesty's  Government  had  no  intentions  that  were  otherwise 
than  pacific,  still  less  any  concert  with  other  Powers  for  any  but 
pacific  purposes. 

"  But  the  state  of  things  might  change.  The  present  overture  of 
Her  Majesty's  Government  might  be  rejected  as  the  representation  of 
March  2nd  had  been  rejected  by  the  Imperial  Government.  The  insur- 
rection in  Poland  might  continue  and  might  assume  larger  proportions ; 
the  atrocities  on  both  sides  might  be  aggravated,  and  extended  to 
a  wider  range  of  country.  If  in  such  a  state  of  affairs  the  Emperor 
of  Russia  were  to  take  no  steps  of  a  conciliatory  nature,  dangers 
and  complications  might  arise  not  at  present  in  contemplation." 
*  Lord  Salisbury — "  Foreign  Policy,"  p.  198. 


220  Memories 

"  If  this  was  not  a  threat  of  war,"  says  Lord  Salisbury,  "  language 
has  no  meaning."  Every  one  of  these  mights  and  might  be's  did 
occur,  but  the  threats  remained  mere  gas.  Prince  Gortchakoff, 
cool,  calm,  and  courteous,  refused  with  firmness  to  acknowledge 
any  of  Lord  Russell's  pretensions. 

In  the  meantime,  in  the  month  of  April  the  Emperor  made  the 
offer  of  an  amnesty  to  Poland,  granting  "  a  free  pardon  to  all  those 
of  our  subjects  in  the  Kingdom  implicated  in  the  late  troubles 
who  have  not  incurred  the  responsibility  of  other  crimes  or  mis- 
demeanours committed  on  service  in  the  ranks  of  our  army,  and  who 
may  before  the  ist  (i3th)  of  May  lay  down  their  arms  and  return  to 
their  allegiance."  This  offer  the  Central  Committee,  who  now 
called  themselves  the  Provisional  Government,  in  insulting  terms 
contemptuously  refused.  They  published  a  proclamation  which  said  : 

"  Poland  is  well  aware  what  confidence  she  can  place  in  this 
pretended  amnesty,  and  in  the  promises  of  the  Russian  Government. 
But  to  avoid  any  mistake,  we  formally  declare  that  we  reject  all 
these  false  concessions.  It  was  not  with  the  intention  of  obtaining 
more  or  less  liberal  concessions  that  we  took  up  arms,  but  to  get 
rid  of  the  detested  yoke  of  a  foreign  government,  and  to  reconquer 
our  ancient  and  complete  independence." 

The  treatment  by  the  Poles  of  the  Emperor's  magnanimous  offer 
furnished  the  answer  to  the  officious  advice  given  by  Lord  Russell. 

There  was  one  class  of  unfortunates  who  suffered  by  the  Polish 
insurrection  of  whom  little  or  nothing  has  been  said  or  written,  and 
whose  troubles  have  therefore  excited  no  commiseration  out  of 
Russia.  The  landed  proprietors  of  Poland,  wishing  to  introduce 
into  the  country  improved  agricultural  methods,  imported  from 
Germany  a  number  of  Protestant  labourers.  These  men  during 
the  rebellion  were  persecuted  with  all  the  animosity  of  bigoted 
Catholicism  and  conscious  inferiority  by  the  Schliachta,  or  petty 
nobility,  seconded  by  the  jealousy  of  the  peasants,  who  naturally 
looked  upon  them  as  interlopers — "  blacklegs  "  as  men  say  nowa- 
days— and  as  having  no  right  to  cumber  the  country.  Their 
dwellings  were  destroyed,  their  families  murdered,  and  the  survivors 
dared  not  go  back  to  their  homes. 

The  Imperial  Government,  having  been  compelled  to  take  the  case 


Russia  221 

in  hand,  resolved  to  send  1,800  of  these  poor  fellows  to  the  govern- 
ment of  Samatra,  a  rich  province  to  which  many  of  the  exiled  Poles 
had  already  been  sent.  There  is  no  doubt  that  if  the  Russians 
acted  with  severity,  the  Poles  outdid  them  in  cruelty.  The  two 
were  well  matched,  and  between  them  it  is  fearful  to  think  what 
must  have  been  the  general  average  of  misery  ! 

I  have  alluded  above  to  what  Prince  Suvoroff  said  of  General 
Muravieff.  A  little  later  in  the  year  another  scheme  was  set  on  foot 
by  certain  ultra-Russians  to  build  a  church  at  Vilna  and  dedicate 
it  to  St.  Michael,  Muravieff  s  patron  saint,  in  honour  of  the  glory 
of  the  General  and  to  celebrate  his  quelling  of  the  insurrection  in 
Lithuania.  The  plan  met  with  much  opposition,  and  the  Marechal 
de  la  Noblesse  of  the  district  of  Tsarskoe  Selo,  on  being  invited  to 
support  the  project,  wrote  an  indignant  letter  in  reply,  asking  what 
conduct  on  his  part  could  have  led  the  originators  to  suppose  that 
he  approved  the  actions  of  the  General.  General  Muravieff  stood 
in  a  peculiar  position  for  an  officer  holding  a  high  command  under  a 
despotic  government.  The  authorities  accepted  his  services  and  so 
gave  their  moral  support  and  countenance  to  his  policy ;  but  they 
took  no  steps  to  defend  him  from  the  animadversions  of  his  enemies, 
nor  did  any  Russian  feel  that  he  was  committing  an  indiscretion  in 
openly  canvassing  the  conduct  of  the  tyrant  of  Vilna. 

All  this  showed  that  the  Russians  were  enjoying  far  greater 
liberty  of  both  press  and  speech  than  was  believed  abroad.  In  ihis 
respect  there  was  a  marked  change  since  the  last  reign.  Speech  was 
free  enough,  sometimes  startlingly  so.  There  was  a  certain  amount 
of  censorship  of  the  journalistic  press  ;  but  as  regards  literature  hi 
general,  books  were  openly  sold  which  under  Nicholas  no  bookseller 
would  have  dared  to  stock  upon  his  shelves. 

With  this  arrow  in  his  quiver  Prince  Gortchakoff  wrote:  "If 
Lord  Russell  followed  attentively  the  productions  of  the  Press 
devoted  to  the  Polish  rebellion,  he  must  be  aware  that  the  insur- 
gents demand  neither  an  amnesty,  nor  an  autonomy,  nor  a  repre- 
sentation either  more  or  less  complete.  The  absolute  independence 
of  the  Kingdom  even  would  be  for  them  only  a  means  for  arriving 
at  the  final  object  of  their  aspirations.  This  object  is  dominion  over 


222  Memories 

provinces  where  the  immense  majority  are  Russians  by  race  or  by 
religion  ;  in  a  word,  it  is  Poland  extended  to  the  two  seas,  which 
would  inevitably  bring  about  a  claim  to  the  Polish  provinces 
belonging  to  other  neighbouring  Powers. 

"We  desire  to  pronounce  no  judgment  upon  these  aspirations.  It 
suffices  for  us  to  prove  that  they  exist,  and  that  the  Polish  insurgents 
do  not  conceal  them.  The  final  result  in  which  they  would  arrive 
cannot  be  doubtful.  It  would  be  a  general  conflagration  which  the 
elements  of  disorder  scattered  through  all  countries  would  be  brought 
to  complicate,  and  which  seek  for  an  opportunity  to  subvert  Europe." 

One  would  have  imagined  that  the  dignified  and  lofty  tone  adopted 
by  the  Prince,  combined  with  the  avowed  pretensions  of  the  rebels, 
would  have  convinced  Lord  Russell  that  his  interference  would  not 
be  accepted,  and  could  only  end  in  the  humiliation  of  England. 
Nothing  could  stop  Lord  Russell. 

On  the  iyth  of  June  he  again  wrote  a  despatch  to  Lord  Napier 
with  instructions  to  read  it  to  Prince  Gortchakoff,  and  leave  a 
copy  with  him.  That  despatch  was  perhaps  one  of  the  most  inso- 
lent communications  ever  addressed  to  a  friendly  Power  ;  no  govern- 
ment could  admit  the  interference  of  another  country  in  dictating 
the  measures  which  it  should  take  for  the  maintenance  of  law  and 
order  among  its  own  people,  which  is  the  exclusive  right  and  duty  of 
every  independent  Power,  nor  is  it  intelligible  that  any  such  advice 
should  be  offered  unless  the  candid  friend  should  be  prepared  to 
enforce  it  at  the  cannon's  mouth.  The  despatch  in  question  was  the 
one  which  formulated  the  famous  "  six  points."  This  is  what  it  said : 

"  In  present  circumstances  it  appears  to  Her  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment that  nothing  less  than  the  following  outline  of  measures  should 
be  adopted  as  the  bases  of  pacification : 

"  i.     Complete  and  general  amnesty. 

"2.  National  representation,  with  powers  similar  to  those 
which  are  fixed  by  the  Charter  of  the  i5th  (27th)  of  November, 
1815. 

"3.  Poles  to  be  named  to  public  offices  in  such  a  manner 
as  to  form  a  distinct  national  administration,  having  the  confi- 
dence of  the  country. 


Russia  223 

"  4.  Full  and  entire  liberty  of  conscience  ;  repeal  of  the 
restrictions  imposed  on  Catholic  worship. 

"5.  The  Polish  language  recognized  in  the  kingdom  as 
the  official  language,  and  used  as  such  in  the  administration 
of  the  law  and  in  education. 

"  6.  The  establishment  of  a  regular  and  legal  system  of 
recruiting. 

"  These  six  points  might  serve  as  the  indications  of  measures  to 
be  adopted,  after  calm  and  full  deliberation. 

"  What  Her  Majesty's  Government  propose,  therefore,  consists 
in  these  three  propositions  : 

"  ist.  The  adoption  of  the  six  points  enumerated  as  bases 
of  negotiation. 

"  2nd.  A  provisional  suspension  of  arms  to  be  proclaimed 
by  the  Emperor  of  Russia. 

"  3rd.  A  conference  of  the  eight  Powers  who  signed  the 
Treaty  of  Vienna." 

Prince  Gortchakoff's  answer  was  crushing,  the  more  so  as  it  was 
couched  in  the  most  courteous  language  of  diplomacy,  and  was 
based  upon  an  unanswerable  chain  of  logical  arguments.  Lord  Rus- 
sell was  very  quietly  shown  that  he  was  dealing  with  matters  which 
he  did  not  understand  and  with  which  he  had  no  concern.  Similar 
communications  were  addressed  to  Baron  Budberg,  the  Russian  Am- 
bassador at  Paris,  for  the  benefit  of  M.  Drouyn  de  Lhuys,  the  French 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  who  had  the  mortification  of  finding 
himself  compelled  to  share  in  a  humiliation  which  was  odious  to  him. 

A  despatch  to  Baron  Budberg  contained  the  following  words : 
"  As  regards  the  responsibility  which  His  Majesty  may  assume  in 
his  international  relations,  those  relations  are  regulated  by  inter- 
national law.  The  violation  of  those  principles  may  alone  lead  to  a 
responsibility.  Our  august  Master  has  always  respected  and 
observed  these  principles  towards  other  States.  His  Majesty  has 
the  right  to  expect  and  to  demand  the  same  respect  on  the  part  of 
the  other  Powers."  M.  Drouyn  de  Lhuys  was  furious,  and  it  was 
not  long,  as  we  shall  see,  before  he  had  the  opportunity  to  make 
Lord  Russell  feel  it 


224  Memories 

Lord  Russell  climbed  down  not  handsomely.  In  a  despatch  to 
Lord  Napier  of  the  nth  of  August  he  said  :  "If  Russia  does  not 
perform  all  that  depends  upon  her  to  further  the  moderate  and 
conciliatory  views  of  the  three*  Powers  "  [Great  Britain,  Austria 
and  France]  "  if  she  does  not  enter  upon  the  path  which  is  opened 
to  her  by  friendly  counsels,  she  makes  herself  responsible  for  the 
serious  consequences  which  the  prolongation  of  the  troubles  of 
Poland  may  produce." 

And  that  was  the  lame  and  impotent  conclusion  of  a  game  of 
brag  and  insolent  bluster  which  had  been  carried  on  for  many 
months.  The  fizzling  out  of  a  damp  squib  ! 

But  there  is  one  story  which  Mr.  Hennessy,  Conservative  member 
for  King's  County,  told  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  was  never 
contradicted,  which  is  too  good  and  too  characteristic  to  be 
omitted — I  take  it  verbatim  from  Lord  Salisbury's  essay  on 
Foreign  Politics,  p.  202. 

"  When  Prince  Gortchakoff's  last  defiance  had  arrived,  and  the 
Government  had  made  up  their  minds  to  practise  the  better  part 
of  valour,  Lord  Russell  made  a  speech  at  Blairgowrie,  and  being 
somewhat  encouraged  and  cheered  by  the  various  circumstances 
of  consolation  which  are  administered  by  an  entertainment  of 
that  kind,  he  recovered  after  dinner  somewhat  of  his  wonted 
courage,  and  under  the  influence  of  the  valour  so  acquired  he 
proclaimed  that,  in  his  opinion,  Russia  had  sacrificed  her  treaty 
right  to  Poland.  Having  made  the  statement  thus  publicly,  he 
felt  that  he  could  not  do  less  than  insert  it  into  the  despatch  to 
Prince  Gortchakoff,  with  whom  it  was  proposed  to  terminate  the 
inglorious  correspondence.  He  flattered  himself,  indeed,  that 
so  hostile  an  announcement,  while  not  leading  actually  to  a  war, 
might  enable  him  to  ride  off  with  something  like  a  flourish,  which 
his  friends  might  construe  into  a  triumph. 

"  And  so  the  despatch  was  sent  off,  formally  bringing  the  corre- 
spondence to  a  close,  and  concluding  with  the  grandiose  announce- 
ment that,  in  the  opinion  of  the  British  Government,  Russia  had 
lorfeited  the  title  to  Poland  which  she  had  acquired  by  the  Treaty 
of  Vienna.  But  even  this  modest  attempt  to  escape  from  disgrace 


Russia  225 

was  not  destined  to  succeed.  When  the  despatch  reached  St. 
Petersburg,  it  was  shown  to  Prince  Gortchakoff  before  being  for- 
mally presented.  '  You  had  better  not  present  this  concluding 
sentence  to  me,'  is  reported  to  have  been  the  Prince's  brief  but 
significant  observation.  The  hint  was  taken,  the  despatch  was 
sent  back  to  England  and  submitted  anew  to  the  Foreign  Secretary. 
Doubtless  with  disgust,  but  bowing  to  his  inexorable  destiny,  he 
executed  this  new  act  of  self-abasement.  The  offending  sentence 
was  erased  by  its  author  with  the  resolution  of  a  Christian  martyr. 
In  this  form  it  was  sent  back  to  Russia  ;  and  it  still  bears,  as 
published  to  the  world,  in  the  bald  mutilation  of  the  paragraph 
\vith  which  it  concludes  and  in  the  confusion  of  its  dates,  the  marks 
of  its  enforced  and  reluctant  revision." 

The  confusion  of  the  dates  is  very  significant.  The  despatch 
was  originally  dated  in  September  and  refers  to  the  despatch  of 
August  nth,  as  of  the  nth  ultimo.  As  accepted  by  the  Prince  it 
was  dated  in  October,  but  still  refers  to  the  August  despatch  as 
of  the  nth  ultimo. 

The  humiliation  of  England  was  complete.  We  had  threatened 
and  we  had  not  performed.  We  had  encouraged  the  Poles  to 
believe  that  they  might  count  upon  our  protection,  and  when  we 
found  that  something  more  than  brave  words  would  be  needed,  we 
deserted  them.  That  was  the  view  taken  abroad  of  Lord  Russell's 
policy.  It  was  treated  with  derision  and  contempt.  In  Russia 
there  was  at  that  time  a  very  strong  feeling  of  friendliness  towards 
the  English.  But  it  was  a  social  friendship,  not  a  political  appre- 
ciation, and  I  believe  that  was  largely,  perhaps  one  might  say 
entirely,  due  to  the  great  personal  charm  and  popularity  of  Lord 
and  Lady  Napier.  As  a  power  to  be  reckoned  with  we  had  ceased 
to  exist. 

I  remember  upon  one  occasion  my  old  friend,  the  Marquis  de 
Montebello,  who  was  afterwards  French  Ambassador  at  St.  Peters- 
burg (as  his  father  had  been  before  him)  saying, "  Autrefois  lorsqu'il 
s'agissait  d'une  guerre  en  Europe  on  vous  consultait.  Aujourd'hui 
on  vous  dit — zut !  "  My  answer  to  him  was,  "  Don't  be  too  sure 
— Lord  Russell  is  not  England." 

*  ****** 

VOT    i  15 


226  Memories 

General  Cassius  Clay  was  United  States  Minister  in  Russia  at 
the  time  of  which  I  am  writing.  He  was  rather  a  notorious  person 
whose  name  Punch  had,  owing  to  his  virulent  abuse  of  England, 
translated  into  Brutus  Mud.  One  day  General  Clay  came  up  to 
me  and  began  speaking  in  the  friendliest  way  about  England. 
After  some  generalities  he  turned  the  conversation  on  to  the 
Polish  question,  belauding  Lord  Russell's  despatches,  which  he 
said  had  made  "  his  old  Anglo-Saxon  blood  boil  in  his  veins  when 
he  saw  the  magnanimous  attitude  of  an  English  statesman."  I 
don't  think  that  clinical  thermometers  had  been  invented  in  those 
days,  but  it  would  have  been  interesting  to  have  taken  the  tem- 
perature of  the  good  General's  "  Anglo-Saxon  blood  "  when  he 
came  to  read  the  final  collapse  of  all  the  bluster. 

The  insurrection  died  a  not  altogether  natural  death  in  1864. 
It  had  been  a  hopeless  affair  from  the  first,  and  the  moral  influence 
of  a  secret  Treaty  concluded  between  Prussia  and  Russia*  ex- 
tinguished the  last  embers  of  the  fire.  Bands  of  peasants,  undrilled, 
armed  with  scythes  and  with  such  primitive  weapons  as  might 
come  to  hand,  lurking  houseless,  half  starved  and  miserably  clothed 
in  the  frozen  mazes  of  pathless  forests,  could  not  for  long  resist  the 
trained  battalions  of  the  Tsar  and  the  curse  of  the  climate. 
Langiewicz  saw  that  the  last  trick  in  the  game  had  been  trumped, 
and  the  dictator  left  the  poor  wretches  to  their  fate. 

I  have  one  more  tale  to  tell  of  the  Polish  revolution.  The  race 
of  Bobadils  is  not  extinct.  For  them  proclamations  of  neutrality 
are  things  of  no  account,  at  which  they  snap  their  fingers  ;  so 
long  as  matters  go  well  with  them  they  are  as  truculent  as  their 
own  swords  ;  but  once  let  them  fall  into  difficulties  and  be  taken 
prisoners,  their  cries  are  piteous,  and  the  Foreign  Offices  of 
their  various  countries  are  besieged  with  prayers  that  their 
Ambassadors  may  be  instructed  to  interfere  on  their  behalf. 

One  day,  when  the  Polish  insurrection  was  still  ablaze,  there 
came  a  batch  of  telegrams  to  the  Embassy  directing  Lord  Napier 
to  plead  on  behalf  of  a  certain  English  gentleman  who,  having  been 
taken  red-handed  in  some  murderous  attack,  would  be  tried  by 
court  martial  and  shot  unless  some  pressure  could  be  brought  to 
•  Brockhaus — "Conversations  Lexicon,"  Art.  Polen. 


Russia  227 

bear  on  his  behalf.  Lord  Napier  knew  that  it  would  be  useless 
to  enter  into  a  diplomatic  correspondence  on  the  subject,  so  he  at 
once  asked  for  an  audience  of  the  Tsar,  which  was  immediately 
granted.  It  was  not  a  pleasant  duty. 

On  his  return  from  the  palace  he  told  me  that  when  he  acquainted 
the  Emperor  with  the  object  of  his  visit,  His  Majesty  looked  very 
black  and  deeply  displeased  ;  he  said  that  he  could  have  great 
sympathy  with  his  own  misguided  subjects  who  were  persuaded 
by  agitators  into  the  belief  that  they  were  suffering  from  grievous 
wrongs  at  his  hands  ;  but  what  excuse  could  be  made  for  the 
subject  of  a  friendly  Power  who  came  to  add  fuel  to  the  flame  ? 
Lord  Napier  pointed  out  that  there  was  just  this  excuse  for  the 
gentleman,  that  his  mother  was  a  Pole,  and  he  prayed  earnestly 
for  mercy.  In  the  end  the  Tsar,  as  a  special  favour  to  Lord  Napier, 
granted  him  a  free  pardon — of  course  on  parole  to  leave  Poland 
and  not  again  to  take  part  in  the  rebellion.  It  was  a  generous 
and  kingly  act,  a  gracious  favour  to  Lord  Napier,  and  a  proof  of 
the  esteem  in  which  my  much-loved  chief  was  held.* 

The  Emperor  Alexander  was  a  most  magnanimous  ruler.  Many 
and  signal  were  the  proofs  of  the  love  which  he  bore  his  people. 
His  liberation  of  the  serfs,  a  measure  of  humanity  which  has 
perhaps  never  been  exceeded,  and  which  in  1864  he  extended  to 
Poland,  in  spite  of  all  that  had  occurred,  bore  eloquent  testimony  to 
his  generosity.  And  at  the  time  when  I  was  in  Russia  the  people 
returned  his  love  with  interest.  He  was  to  them  like  a  divinity. 

Many  and  many  a  time  have  I  seen  the  mujiks  in  the  dead  of 
winter  standing  bareheaded,  facing  a  cruel  blast  coming  down  the 
river  from  the  Ladoga  Lake,  until  the  Emperor's  sledge  should  be 
out  of  sight — a  little,  simple  one-horse  sledge,  without  any  guard, 
nor  even  an  aide-de-camp.  He  was  better  protected  by  the  love 
of  his  people  than  he  could  have  been  by  all  the  myrmidons  of 
his  police.  There  were  no  Nihilists  in  those  days  ;  the  word  had 
been  coined  by  Dostoievski,  the  novelist,  but  in  another  sense. 

*  Curiously  enough,  by  one  of  those  ineptitudes  for  which  private  secre- 
taries are  famous,  the  brother  of  this  very  gentleman,  the  son  of  a  Polish 
mother,  had  been  shortly  before  attached  to  the  British  Embassy  at 
St.  Petersburg. 

VOL.    I  15* 


228  Memories 

Years  afterwards,  when  the  news  came  of  the  hideous  murder  of 
the  great  Tsar,  looking  back  upon  those  loyal  times,  I  could  not 
believe  my  ears.  It  was  incomprehensible.  So  barbarous  did 
it  seem — so  barbarous  and  withal  so  foolish. 

Surely  no  man  was  ever  more  truly  a  prophet  in  his  own  country 
than  was  Prince  Gortchakoff  at  St.  Petersburg  in  the  autumn  of 
1863.  His  popularity  was  something  phenomenal,  and  for  a  great 
deal  of  it  he  had  to  thank  Lord  Russell.  Praise  of  the  Russian 
answers  was  in  all  mouths,  and  Prince  Gortchakoff  was  the  idol 
of  the  moment,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  there  were  some  ill- 
natured  persons  who  hinted  rather  loudly  that  the  Emperor  was 
growing  a  little  jealous  of  his  Minister's  popularity,  and  that  there 
had  been  one  or  two  evil  quarters  of  hours.  I  am  not  sure  that 
I  was  not  the  witness  of  one  myself.  It  was  at  a  great  party  where 
the  Emperor  was  playing  cards.  The  Prince  went  up  to  His 
Majesty  with  a  very  low  bow  ;  the  Emperor  turned  sharp  round 
upon  him,  showing  all  his  teeth,  literally,  with  the  growl  of  an 
angry  lion,  and  the  poor  old  gentleman's  discomfiture  was  not 
pleasant  to  behold.  Many  people,  of  course,  saw  the  affair,  and  it 
was  much  discussed  in  salons  and  chancelleries. 

The  first  time  that  I  saw  Prince  Gortchakoff  come  into  a  draw- 
ing-room I  looked  round  for  Mr.  Winkle,  Mr.  Tracy  Tupman  and 
the  poet  Snodgrass,  for  here  was  Mr.  Pickwick  in  person.  Barring 
the  white  kerseymere  smalls  and  the  black  gaiters,  the  likeness 
was  complete.  The  round,  good-humoured  face,  very  pink  and 
white,  thin  grey  hair,  eyes  beaming  rays  of  human  kindness  out 
of  a  pair  of  gold-rimmed  spectacles,  a  most  genial  smile,  the  per- 
fection of  good  manners,  pleasant  to  everybody — altogether  a  most 
engaging  personality.  Small  wonder  that  St.  Petersburg  loved 
him  not  only  for  his  great  qualities,  but  also  for  his  small  foibles, 
lor  did  not  these  give  endless  opportunities  to  Tutcheff ,  the  Sydney 
Smith  of  Russia  ?  Vanity  was  always  said  to  be  the  Prince's 
strongest  weakness.  One  night,  at  a  dinner  at  which  I  was 
present,  the  talk  turned  upon  the  three  famous  despatches. 
Somebody  said  : 

"  Lorsque  le  Prince  Gortchakoff  veut  se  procurer  un  vrai  plaisir 
il  fait  venir  un  de  ses  secretaires  pour  lui  lire  ses  trois  depeches. 


Russia  229 

Alors  il  se  jette  dans  un  fauteuil,  ferme  les  yeux,  et  a  tout  1'air 
d'un  homme  qui " 

"  Effectivement,"  interrupted  Tutcheff.  "  C'est  le  Narcisse 
qui  se  mire  dans  son  encrier." 

The  fun  of  the  thing  was  that  everybody  knew  that,  although 
of  course  the  despatches  represented  his  policy,  he  had  not  written 
a  word  of  them.  They  were  drafted  by  a  certain  M.  Katakazy, 
a  very  clever  writer,  who  was  afterwards  Minister  at  Washington, 
whence,  for  some  reason  or  other,  he  was  recalled,  and  so  far  as  I 
know,  disappeared.  At  all  events  we  heard  no  more  of  him. 

On  one  occasion,  before  the  Washington  mission,  the  Prince,  who, 
moved  by  some  caprice,  had  wished  to  get  rid  of  Katakazy,  sent 
for  him  and  told  him  that  he  thought  the  time  had  come  when  he 
should  send  him  abroad.  Katakazy,  who  did  not  wish  to  go,  and 
who  could  play  upon  his  chief  as  Paganini  could  upon  a  Stradi- 
varius,  thanked  him  warmly,  and  expressed  his  joy  at  being  given 
the  opportunity  of  telling  the  world  how  great  was  the  man  whom 
he  had  had  the  honour  to  serve  so  long  as  secretary.  The  Prince 
chortled  and  said,  in  his  purring  way  :  "  Well,  perhaps  I  should 
miss  your  cleverness,  so  you  had  better  stay." 

There  was  another  claim  to  renown  which  M.  Katakazy  pos- 
sessed— one  of  which  he  was  perhaps  even  more  proud  than  he 
was  of  that  of  being  the  champion  despatch  writer  and  protocolist 
of  the  Russian  Foreign  Office.  All  of  us  who  knew  our  Paris  in  the 
late  fifties  and  early  sixties  (alas  !)  remember  the  famous  waiter 
in  the  Cafe  de  la  Rotonde  whose  "  Bourn!  "  in  answer  to  the  cry 
of  "  Gar f  on  !  "  rolled  out  in  a  deep  bass  voice  that  made  all  the 
cups  and  saucers  and  spoons  and  glasses  rattle  on  the  marble  tables, 
made  the  fortune  of  the  "  patron  "  of  the  establishment.  His 
fame  lives,  for  our  beloved  Du  Maurier  has  celebrated  him  in  his 
masterpiece  "  Trilby."  M.  Katakazy's  mimicry  of  this  hero  was 
the  delight  of  St.  Petersburg.  He  had,  moreover,  a  very  hand- 
some wife,  and  that  is  always  an  asset  for  a  diplomatist  and  private 
secretary. 

Here  is  another  of  the  Prince's  harmless  little  vainglorious 
speeches.  One  day  he  called  at  the  British  Embassy  with  his  son 
Michel,  whom  he  presented  to  Lady  Napier  in  the  following  words  : 


23°  Memories 

"  Permettez,  Madame,  que  je  vous  presente  le  briilot  que  je 
viens  de  lancer  dans  le  monde." 

Poor  little  brulot !  destined  neither  to  set  the  Thames  nor  the 
Neva  on  fire ! 

As  the  Prince  was  a  widower,  a  lady  who  was  a  relation  of  his, 
used  to  do  the  honours  for  him  at  his  parties,  and  she  had  her 
private  apartments  in  his  official  residence.  This  lady  had  a  great 
friend,  an  officer  in  one  of  the  Guards'  regiments.  One  evening, 
when  Prince  Gortchakoff  had  a  great  official  banquet,  Tutcheff, 
who  was  one  of  the  guests,  as  he  drove  up  to  the  grand  entrance 
saw  this  officer  being  admitted  at  the  private  door.  As  he  reached 
the  drawing-room,  he  heard  the  Prince  making  the  lady's  excuses 
for  not  being  present.  "  Figurez-vous  son  desespoir  !  Elle  est 
retenue  chez  elle  par  une  affreuse  migraine."  "  Ah,  oui  \  "  said 
Tutcheff  the  cruel,  "  je  1'ai  vue,  sa  migraine,  qui  montait  chez  elle 
au  moment  ou  je  descendais  de  mon  traineau."  Of  course  the 
story  was  all  over  the  town  the  next  morning. 

The  pleasantest  salon  of  St.  Petersburg  in  my  day  was  that  of 
Princess  Kotchoubey.  Her  palace,  the  Dom  Belaselski,  had  what 
I  should  think  must  be  the  finest  staircase  of  any  private  house 
in  the  world.  The  guest-rooms  were  furnished  with  a  magnificence 
which  made  one  open  one's  eyes  very  wide  indeed.  In  one  of  the 
smaller  and  more  intimate  rooms  the  Princess  used  to  sit  every 
evening,  dispensing  tea  to  a  small  coterie  of  friends,  essentially  a 
political  assemblage,  hardly  ever  more  than  a  dozen.  Prince 
Gortchakoff  was  almost  always  there  ;  Lord  Napier  and  one  or 
two  of  the  ambassadors  very  often.  Admission  to  this  very  choice 
gathering  was  a  privilege  much  coveted  and  rarely  attained  ;  I 
gained  it  by  the  grace  and  favour  of  Countess  Apponyi,  the 
Austrian  Ambassadress  in  London,  who  was  Princess  Kotchoubey 's 
sister,  and  gave  me  a  letter  for  her,  to  which  I  have  already 
alluded,  and  which  stood  me  in  good  stead,  for  it  turned  out  to 
be  a  passport  to  all  that  was  most  distinguished  in  Russian 
society. 

One  evening  Prince  Gortchakoff  brought  Khalil  Bey  (afterwards 
Khalil  Pasha),  the  Turkish  Ambassador,  to  present  him  to  the 
Princess.  A  great  lady  present,  who  could  be  very  haughty  and, 


Russia  231 

indeed,  insolent  when  she  chose,  put  on  her  most  Lady  Disdain 
air,  and  said  in  her  pretty  sing-song  French  : 

"  Je  suppose,  Monsieur  1'Ambassadeur,  que  vous  avez  etc"  bien 
frappe  de  tout  ce  que  vous  avez  vu  ici." 

"  Mais  de  quoi  done,  Madame  ?  " 

"  De  notre  belle  ville,  de  nos  quais,  de  nos  palais,  de  toute  notre 
civilisation,  enfin." 

"  Mais  non,  Madame,"  answered  the  witty  Turk,  who  was 
Tutcheffs  rival  in  repartee.  "  Vous  savez  qu'en  Turquie  nous 
sommes  aussi  excessivement  arrieres,"  with  the  sweetest  smile  he 
sat  down  and  drank  a  triumphant  cup  of  tea.  But  the  lady  was 
not  so  happy  ;  she  had  attacked  the  wrong  man. 

Khalil  Bey  was  always  amusing,  but  sometimes  his  wit  was 
apt  to  be  a  little  cruel.  There  was  a  certain  Madame  R.  K., 
known  as  La  Venus  Tartare,  an  extraordinarily  beautiful  woman 
of  the  Kalmuck  type,  with  the  figure  of  a  Juno.  She  had 
brought  out  a  book  called  "  Un  Hiver  a  Paris,"  which  she  had 
persuaded  Theophile  Gautier,  Madame  Georges  Sand  and  one 
other  French  man  of  letters  (I  think  my  old  friend  Octave 
Feuillet)  to  write  for  her  in  collaboration,  she  publishing  it  as  her 
own,  though  she  had  not  penned  a  word  of  it.  Everybody  knew 
this,  but  that  did  not  raise  a  blush  in  her,  and  it  came  out  with, 
as  a  frontispiece,  a  photograph  of  Madame  R.  K.'s  back,  decollete 
almost  down  to  the  waist.  She  was  good  enough  to  send  me  a 
copy  of  it,  and  I  went  to  thank  her.  As  we  were  sitting  discussing 
the  book,  who  should  be  announced  but  the  Turkish  Ambassador. 

"  Ah,"  said  Madame  R.  K.,  "  nous  parlions  justement  de  mon 
livre.  L'avez-vous  lu  ?  " 

"  Non,  Madame  ! — et  vous  ?  "  was  Khalil  Bey's  biting  answer, 
uttered  with  the  demurest  face  of  innocence  ;  but  the  so-called 
Bulgarian  atrocities  of  his  countrymen  in  later  years  were  not 
more  barbarously  searching.  I  felt  so  sorry  for  the  poor  beautiful 
Venus  Tartare. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    WINTER    OF    1863-4 

THERE  is  an  old  saying  and  a  true  one,  that  in  Russia  you 
see  the  winter  and  in  Italy  you  feel  it.  In  the  one  case 
the  houses  are  so  beautifully  warmed  and  so  many  precautions 
are  taken,  that  men  can  laugh  at  the  climate ;  in  Italy,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  equipment  is  all  for  summer,  and  winter  may 
torture  as  it  pleases. 

In  St.  Petersburg  the  year  1863  died  a  glorious  death.  The 
month  of  December  was  brilliant  and  we  "  saw  the  winter  "  in  all 
its  beauty.  Two  or  three  blizzards  had  brought  the  roads  into 
ideal  condition.  Smoothly  and  noiselessly  the  sledges  flew  over 
the  white  velvet  of  the  yet  undefiled  virgin  snow ;  the  crisp  air 
was  full  of  energy  generously  dispensed  ;  the  cheery  cries  of  the 
fat  coachmen,  made  still  fatter  by  the  padding  under  their  heavy 
furs,  their  beards  frozen  stiff  and  stark;  the  tinkling  bell-music 
of  the  Orloff  trotters ;  the  monotonous  chants  of  the  mujiks  sitting 
in  their  sleigh-carts;  the  sparkling  city  hung  with  festoons  of  ice- 
opals  flashing  back  the  glory  of  the  short-lived  winter  sun ;  great 
ladies  dashing  past  in  their  troikas,  nothing  to  be  seen  of  any  one 
of  them  but  just  a  little  pink  nose  peeping  out  of  the  muffling  sea- 
otter  furs  and  sables ;  the  glittering  shops  full  of  customers 
choosing  etrennes — everybody  busy  and  eager,  making  ready  to 
speed  the  parting,  welcome  the  coming  year. 

Far  away  in  the  ice-bound  morasses  of  Lithuania,  in  the  gloomy 
forests  of  Poland,  there  might  still  be  here  and  there  the  crack 
of  a  rifle,  some  desultory  fighting,  some  hunting  of  rebels  and 
murderers  instead  of  wolves  and  bears  ;  but  the  capital  of  Peter 

232 


The  Winter  of  1863-64  233 


the  Great  was  deaf  and  blind  to  all  tragedy.  There  could  be  no 
gayer  city  in  the  world  ;  certainly  none  where  the  foreign  diploma- 
tists were  so  hospitably  treated ;  our  lives  were  a  round  of 
festivities  in  the  very  home  of  joyous  revelry. 

In  the  daytime,  on  those  rare  occasions  when  we  were  not  busy 
at  the  Embassy,  there  were  skating  parties,  picnics  to  the  Islands, 
and  the  chance  of  breaking  our  necks  on  the  Montagnes  Russes. 
The  gardens  of  the  Tauride,  which  were  reserved  for  the  Imperial 
Family  and  a  few — very  few — grandees,  were  open  to  us.  In  the 
evening  we  dined  and  danced  and  supped  and  danced  again.  The 
opera  and  the  French  Theatre  Michel  were  a  perfect  blaze  of  jewels, 
smart  dresses,  the  masterpieces  of  Paris,  brilliant  uniforms  and 
decorations  ;  the  black  coats  of  Ambassadors  and  civilian  Ministers 
sprinkled  here  and  there  the  only  sad  notes. 

On  the  I2th  of  January  I  was  invited  by  Princess  Kotchoubey 
to  "  await  the  new  year,"  which,  of  course,  is,  according  to  the  old 
style,  our  I3th.  Curiously  enough,  the  old  style  was  observed 
even  in  the  English  Church,  so  that  the  Christmas  Day  services 
were  held  on  the  7th  of  January,  according  to  our  reckoning.  I 
have  told  elsewhere  of  the  magnificence  of  the  Princess'  palace, 
but  this  entertainment  quite  exceeded  anything  that  I  had  ever 
seen  or  heard  of.  There  were  only  about  fifty  guests,  but  these 
were  all  the  chief  personages  of  St.  Petersburg,  including  Prince 
Gortchakoff,  who,  as  was  his  wont,  appropriated  to  himself  the 
youngest  and  prettiest  lady  present,  for  the  old  Vice-Chancellor 
was  a  great  flirt.  He  was  not  yet  Chancellor,  for  at  the  death 
of  Count  Nesselrode  in  March,  1862,  the  Tsar  would  not  fill  the 
office.  His  Majesty  was  reported  to  have  said  that  "  Nesselrode 
was  one  thing,  Gortchakoff  another."  This  was  a  great  mortifica- 
tion to  the  Prince,  and  gave  occasion  to  some  wit  for  the  saying 
that  Prince  Gortchakoff  was  the  man  of  the  most  virtuous  inclina- 
tions in  the  whole  Empire,  "  parcequ'il  cherche  toujours  a  se 
debarrasser  de  son  Vice."  Another  great  celebrity  who  was 
present  was  Count  Schuvaloff,  the  grand  marshal  of  the  Court,  a 
noble  old  man,  the  father  of  Count  Peter  Schuvaloff  who  was 
afterwards  Ambassador  in  London  and  with  Prince  Gortchakoff 
represented  Russia  at  the  Congress  of  Berlin. 


234  Memories 

On  the  stroke  of  midnight  came  a  procession  of  gorgeous  foot- 
men, bearing  trays  with  glasses  filled  with  champagne,  and  we  all 
clinked  our  goblets  together,  drinking  prosperity  to  the  New  Year. 
Then  followed  a  pretty  old  Russian  custom.  Every  guest  went 
up  to  the  hostess  and  kissed  her  hand,  and  she  went  through  the 
form  of  pretending  to  kiss  each  of  her  friends  on  the  forehead  in 
return.  It  seemed  a  pity  not  to  carry  out  so  graceful  and  pictur- 
esque a  tradition  in  its  entirety.  But  though  Princess  Kotchoubey 
did  no  more  than  bow  over  her  guests'  foreheads  as  they  stooped 
to  kiss  her  hand,  her  reception  of  them  was  grace  itself.  She  was 
a  Queen  in  her  palace,  and  we,  her  subjects  for  the  nonce,  did 
willing  homage  to  her. 

It  seemed  little  short  of  a  miracle  to  step  out  of  the  iron  grip  of 
a  Russian  New  Year's  Eve  into  a  fairyland  in  which  all  the  treasures 
of  the  world  were  sampled — the  diamonds  of  Golconda,  the 
rubies  of  Burmah,  the  turquoises  of  Persia,  pearls  from  the  Eastern 
Seas,  tapestries  of  the  Gobelins,  gold  and  silver  masterpieces  of 
famous  Florentine  and  French  artists,  flowers  and  fruit  of  June 
and  July,  the  warmth  of  summer  with  not  a  fire  to  be  seen,  lighted 
up  by  myriads  of  candles  disposed  in  a  way  of  which  Russia  alone 
seemed  to  have  the  secret.  And  in  all  this  magnificence  there  was 
only  one  tiny  omission,  one  little  blot  to  remind  us  that  we  were 
human,  and  that  humanity  is  imperfect  :  there  were  no  salt- 
spoons  ! 

After  supper  I  had  some  talk  with  Prince  Gortchakoff ,  who  was 
always  very  kind  to  me,  and  often  used  to  come  up  and  have  a 
little  chat  when  we  met  in  society.  We  naturally  talked  about 
the  New  Year's  Day  festivities,  and  he  went  on  to  expatiate  on  the 
religiosity  of  the  Russian  mind,  and  how  to  every  man  hi  the 
country  Russia  was  Holy  Russia. 

He  said  that  few  people  knew  how  deeply  this  feeling  was  in- 
grained in  the  minds  of  the  mujiks,  to  whom  it  was  a  horror  to 
think  that  they  might  be  buried  anywhere  but  in  their  own  country. 
He  gave  as  an  instance  of  this  the  case  of  a  Russian  who,  when 
the  Prince  was  Secretary  of  Legation  in  London,  was  coachman 
in  the  service  of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire.  The  man  asked  for 
him  one  day  at  the  Legation.  On  the  Prince  inquiring  what  he 


The  Winter  of   1863-64  235 


wanted,  he  said  that  he  wanted  to  go  back  home.  "  What  !  "  said 
the  Prince,  "  leave  so  good  a  place  and  so  good  a  master.  Of 
what  have  you  to  complain  ?  "  The  man  said,  "  Of  nothing — 
but  I  am  afraid  lest  I  should  die  here  and  be  buried  out  of  Holy 
Russia."  So  close  was  his  attachment  to  the  sacred  soil  that 
though  there  was  no  other  cause  for  nostalgia,  and  he  was  perfectly 
happy  where  he  was,  he  must  go  home  for  fear  of  this  terrible 
thing  happening.  It  reminded  one  of  the  Chinese  travelling  to 
California  with  their  coffins  for  the  return  journey  to  the  Middle 
Kingdom.  These  things  make  a  man  think. 

Three  days  afterwards,  to  my  great  surprise,  I  was  invited  by 
the  Prince  to  a  great  diplomatic  dinner  at  which  all  the  Ambassadors 
and  Ministers  were  present,  with  certain  members  of  the  Govern- 
ment. There  were  no  ladies  invited. 

Of  course  the  conversation  turned  chiefly  upon  the  Danish 
question,  which  was  reaching  a  very  acute  stage.  When  the  time 
to  leave  arrived,  Prince  Gortchakofi:  detained  Lord  Napier  with 
the  Prussian,  Austrian,  Swedish  and  French  representatives  for  a 
private  conference. 

I  am  not  a  resurrectionist  and  find  little  relish  in  digging  among 
the  graves  of  dead  questions.  The  disputes  over  the  Danish 
duchies  are  long  since  dead  and  buried,  though  the  ambitions  of 
the  men  who  lit  the  torch  of  war  still  live,  and  the  torch  is  still 
blazing.  Those  disputes  were  the  opportunity  of  one  master  mind, 
the  puzzle  of  others,  and  the  joy  of  many  dullard  diplomatists 
who  loved  to  flounder  choking  among  the  shoals  and  whirlpools 
of  a  sea  of  troubles  ;  at  that  time,  they  were  the  despair  of  those 
slaves  of  the  pen,  of  whom  I,  so  long  as  I  was  at  the  Foreign 
Office,  was  one,  whose  task  it  was  to  cover  reams  upon  reams  of 
foolscap  with  reports  of  endless  conversations  with  Princekins  and 
Ministers  at  small  German  courts,  retailed  by  minor  diplomatic 
lights  with  all  the  ineptitude  of  pompous  verbosity. 

The  Governments  which  really  played  a  part  in  the  wrangles 
were  those  of  France,  Russia,  Prussia  and  in  a  lesser  degree  Austria, 
which,  though  very  half-hearted,  was  not  for  the  last  time  being 
towed  by  Prussia  im  schlepptau,  as  a  German  publicist  put  it.  She 
was  dragged  in  by  the  fear  of  losing  in  the  Diet  an  influence  which 


236  Memories 

had  already  been  seriously  undermined,  if  not  exploded,  by 
Bismarck. 

The  real  arbiter  in  the  case  was  England.  Upon  the  conduct 
of  England  depended  the  issues  of  peace  or  war.  Unfortunately 
her  course  was  being  steered  by  a  pilot  unskilled,  fickle,  timid  and 
obstinately  vain;  a  man  who,  as  the  conduct  of  the  Polish  ques- 
tion had  shown,  undeterred  by  more  than  one  sordid  repulse,  was 
full  of  brag  and  bluster,  till  the  critical  moment  should  come — 
then  collapsing  like  a  soap-bubble.  It  was  their  appreciation  of 
Lord  Russell  that  made  foreign  statesmen  tremble  for  the  fate 
of  Denmark,  nor  was  it  long  before  this  want  of  faith  in  him  was 
fully  justified. 

In  the  case  of  the  Danish  duchies  question,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Polish  insurrection,  in  order  rightly  to  understand  what  was 
taking  place  at  St.  Petersburg,  it  is  well  to  consider  for  a  moment 
what  was  the  condition  of  international  affairs.  We  may  leave 
to  those  who  are  curious  in  such  political  puzzles  the  complicated 
intrigues  which  now  have  only  an  academic  or  historic  interest. 

The  question  of  the  incorporation  of  Schleswig,  its  unity  with 
Holstein,  the  position  of  the  infinitesimally  small  Duchy  of  Lauen- 
burg,  the  great  language  dispute  and  the  so-called  "  wrongs  "  of 
the  Schleswigers  and  the  Holsteiners,  together  with  the  claims  of 
the  Duke  of  Augustenburg — all  these  are  ghosts  long  since  laid ; 
they  were  never  anything  more  than  pretexts,  nor  can  anything 
else  be  said  of  Prussia's  plea  that  her  hand  was  being  forced  by 
the  small  German  States ;  it  is  enough  for  the  politician  of  to-day 
to  know  what  was  the  true  objective  of  the  war  ;  that  question 
still  lives  with  us,  growing  in  importance  every  day.  Had  the 
duchies  lain  inland,  far  away  from  the  coast,  the  right  to  their 
possession  would  never  have  disturbed  Europe.  Kiel  was  the 
Naboth's  vineyard — Kiel  with  the  seaboard  of  the  Baltic,  and 
the  North  Sea — Kiel  with  the  possibility  of  a  German  military 
and  commercial  Navy.  That,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  is  an  in- 
controvertible fact ;  we  have  it .  out  of  the  mouths  of  German 
statesmen  themselves — out  of  the  mouth  of  Lord  Palmerston. 

The  glorious  dream  of  the  nationalist  party  in  Prussia  was 
a  United  Fatherland,  strong  by  sea  as  by  land,  taking  its  place 


The  Winter  of  1863-64  237 

at  the  council  board  of  Europe  as  a  Power  of  the  first  magnitude. 
Until  she  should  have  a  navy  fitted  to  cope  with  that  of  any  other 
nation,  this  was  a  position  which  Germany  could  not  hope  to  hold. 
This  planet  of  ours  is  so  built  that  in  many  cases  the  sea  deter- 
mines the  possession  of  the  land  and  the  power  of  states.  By 
land  Prussia  was  already  strong  indeed,  as  she  was  soon  to  prove 
in  1866  and  1870.  At  sea  she  did  not  exist.  She  had  practically 
no  seaboard,  for  what  is  a  seaboard  lacking  harbours  ?  So  long 
as  this  want  remained  there  must  be  many  international  questions 
in  which  the  voice  of  Germany  would  be  of  no  account.  Kiel 
would  solve  the  difficulty — it  was  foredoomed,  and  indeed  the 
project  of  a  new  Suez  Canal,  since  realized,  was  already  in  the  air. 
There  is  a  curious  letter  of  the  old  Kaiser  William  when  he  was 
Prince  of  Prussia,  written  to  his  cousin,  Prince  Adalbert  of  Prussia, 
on  the  i6th  of  August,  1853 — curious  when  we  compare  what 
was  with  what  is  : 

"  How  sorry  I  was  to  miss  you  yesterday  in  order  to 
give  you  a  few  pieces  of  information  which  Steinacker 
(his  aide-de-camp)  told  me  you  wished  for,  and  to  tell 
you  something  of  the  grand  naval  review.  You  will  have 
heard  all  details  by  now.  What  a  pity  that  you  could  not 
hit  it  off !  /  cannot  tell  you  how  great  was  my  emotion, 
especially  when  for  the  first  time  I  passed  by  our  ship,  saw  our 
battle-flag,  our  uniform  and  Pickelhaube  (helmet]  and  heard  our 
drums  on  board  a  man  of  war"*  (the  italics  are  mine),  "and 
that  too  in  the  middle  of  an  English  Fleet !  The  visit  of 
the  Queen  on  board  the  Gefion  was  too  friendly  and  gracious. 
I  was  delighted  with  the  ships,  and  found  our  soldiers  making 
a  goodly  show."* 

The  occasion  was  the  great  naval  review  held  by  Queen  Victoria 
on  the  nth  of  August,  1853,  °^  Spithead,  at  which  the  Prince  of 
Prussia  was  present.  The  words  which  I  have  underlined  are 
significant.  The  sight  of  a  German  man-of-war  would  now  hardly 
be  a  novelty  creating  so  great  emotion  ! 

*  "  Bnefe  Kaiser  Wilhelm's  des  Eraten,"  Insel  Verlag,  Leipzig,  1911, 
p.  100. 


238  Memories 

The  position  of  the  three  Powers,  England,  France  and  Russia, 
which  might  have  combined  to  save  Denmark  and  defeat  the 
ambitious  efforts  of  Germany,  was  peculiar.  Louis  Napoleon  had 
proposed  a  congress  to  consider  the  affairs  of  Europe,  and  having 
been  snubbed  by  Lord  Russell,  was  sulking  in  his  tent.  In  Russia 
there  was  certainly  no  desire  for  war  ;  the  memory  of  the  Crimea 
was  still  fresh  in  men's  minds,  the  Polish  business  was  not  yet 
settled,  and  the  country  was  longing  for  quiet — according  to 
Prince  Gortchakoff's  famous  mot,  "  La  Russie  ne  boude  pas,  elle 
se  recueille,"  but  a  marriage  had  recently  been  arranged  between 
the  Tsarevitch*  and  the  Princess  Dagmar,  the  second  daughter 
of  the  King  of  Denmark,  so  the  Court  (which  at  that  time  was 
still  Russia),  with  Prince  Gortchakoff,  eager  for  an  English  alliance, 
and  a  great  number  of  ministers  and  nobles,  were  strong  partisans 
of  the  Danes  ;  and  the  whole  chivalry  of  the  country  would  have 
donned  its  armour  to  do  battle  for  the  father  of  their  future 
Empress. 

They  only  waited  for  England.  As  to  the  attitude  of  England 
there  should  have  been  no  doubt.  The  declaration  of  her  states- 
men had  been  explicit,  showing  not  only  their  sense  of  an  injustice 
which  was  to  be  perpetrated,  but  beyond  that  a  right  knowledge 
of  the  real  objects  which  Bismarck  had  at  heart.  The  national 
party  in  Germany  made  no  secret  of  them.  Two  quotations 
taken  from  Lord  Salisbury's  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review 
of  January,  1864,  are  clear  in  their  testimony.  There  was  a  debate 
on  the  Danish  Question  in  the  Prussian  Chamber  on  the  ist  of 
December,  1864.  Herr  von  Twesten,  Chairman  of  the  Committee 
appointed  to  consider  the  Augustenburg  claims,  made  the  following 
candid  remark  : 

"  The  Duchies  are  for  Germany  and  Prussia  a  strong  bul- 
wark under  all  circumstances  against  any  attack  coming 
from  the  North.  This,  as  well  as  their  maritime  position, 
are  advantages  which  Prussia  can  never  relinquish." 

*  The  Grand  Duke  Nicholas  Alexandrovitch,  the  eldest  son  of  the  Tsar. 
He  was  in  wretched  health  and  died  in  April,  1865,  and  the  Princess  became 
betrothed  to  his  next  brother,  who  after  his  father's  murder  reigned  as 
Alexander  the  Third. 


The  Winter  of    1863-64  239 

Dr.  Loewe,  a  conspicuous  man  in  the  National  Verein,  speaks 
with  even  less  affectation  of  concealment : 

"  What  interest  has  Prussia  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
London  Protocol  ?  (The  Treaty  of  1852  by  which  the  Powers, 
including  Prussia,  settled  the  succession  to  the  Danish  throne.) 
Since  the  time  of  the  Great  Elector,  Prussian  policy  has 
always  been  rightly  directed  towards  gaining  the  North 
German  Peninsula  for  Germany." 

The  North  German  Peninsula  !  Look  at  the  map  and  then  say 
whether  any  more  arrogant  pretension  was  ever  brought  forward 
in  a  national  Parliament.  Lord  Salisbury  was  not  the  only 
Englishman  who  knew  what  were  the  motives  urging  on  Germany. 
Lord  Palmerston,  at  the  end  of  the  session  of  1863,  spoke  plainly 
on  the  subject.  Mr.  Seymour  Fitzgerald,  who  had  been  Conserva- 
tive Under  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs,  had  asked  a 
question  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  to  what  was  the  policy  of 
Her  Majesty's  Government  in  regard  to  the  Danish  Question — Lord 
Palmerston's  answer  was  as  follows  : 

"  There  is  no  use  in  disguising  the  fact  that  what  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  German  design,  and  the  desire  of  connecting 
Schleswig  with  Holstein,  is  the  dream  of  a  German  fleet  and 
the  wish  to  get  Kiel  as  a  German  seaport.  That  may  be  a 
good  reason  why  they  should  wish  it ;  but  it  is  no  reason 
why  they  should  violate  the  rights  and  independence  of  Den- 
mark for  an  object  which,  even  if  it  were  accomplished,  would 
not  realize  the  expectation  of  those  who  aim  at  it.  The  hon. 
gentleman  asks  what  is  the  policy  and  course  of  Her  Majesty's 
Government  with  regard  to  that  dispute. 

"  As  I  have  already  said,  we  concur  entirely  with  him,  and 
I  am  satisfied,  with  all  reasonable  men  in  Europe,  including 
those  in  France  and  Russia,  in  desiring  that  the  independence 
and  integrity  and  the  rights  of  Denmark  may  be  maintained. 
We  are  convinced,  I  am  convinced  at  least,  that  if  any  violent 
attempt  were  made  to  overthrow  those  rights  and  interfere 


240  Memories 

with  that  independence,  those  who  made  the  attempt  would 
find  in  the  result  that  it  would  not  be  Denmark  alone  with 
which  they  would  have  to  contend." 

Could  language  be  clearer  than  this  pronouncement  urbi  et  orbi 
of  the  Prime  Minister  of  England  ?  But  that  was  not  all.  Lord 
Russell  in  despatch  after  despatch,  many  of  which  are  quoted 
by  Lord  Salisbury  in  his  famous  article,  gave  it  to  be  understood 
at  Paris,  Berlin,  Vienna  and  St.  Petersburg  that  an  attack  on  Den- 
mark would  lead  to  a  rupture  of  relations  between  England  and 
Germany.  "  Her  Majesty  could  not  see  with  indifference  a  mili- 
tary occupation  of  Holstein,"  etc.  "  Should  it  appear  that  Federal 
troops  had  entered  the  Duchy  on  international  grounds,  Her 
Majesty's  Government  may  be  obliged  to  interfere." 

To  Count  Bernstorff,  the  Prussian  Ambassador  in  London, 
Lord  Russell  said,  "  that  Her  Majesty's  Government  could  not 
wonder  that  the  King  of  Denmark  was  ready  to  defend  Schleswig 
and  to  consider  its  hostile  occupation  as  a  fatal  blow  to  the  integrity 
of  his  dominions.  But  I  could  not  doubt  that  he  would  be  assisted 
by  Powers  friendly  to  Denmark  in  that  defence  ...  I  said  that 
since  the  month  of  May,  Great  Britain  had  warned  Austria  of 
these  dangers,  that  Russia  and  Germany  had  likewise  been  warned, 
but  that  the  voice  of  England  was  unheeded,"  etc.,  etc.  Acting  on 
instructions  from  the  Foreign  Secretary,  Lord  Napier  told  Prince 
Gortchakoff  that  "  the  pressing  necessity  for  arresting  warlike 
preparations,  and  combining  the  Powers  less  directly  interested 
in  the  controversy  for  a  mediation,  was  proved  by  the  fact  that 
an  attack  upon  Schleswig  seemed  imminent,  and  that  if  that 
attempt  was  made  it  seemed  not  improbable  that  the  Germans 
might  find  themselves  confronted  by  the  armed  intervention 
of  Great  Britain." 

It  was  not  "  the  voice  of  England  "  that  was  unheeded,  as  Lord 
Russell  put  it,  but  his  own.  He  was  like  Bottom  the  weaver, 
"  Let  me  play  the  lion  too ;  I  will  roar  that  I  will  do  any 
man's  heart  good  to  hear  me  ;  I  will  roar  that  I  will  make  the  Duke 
say,  '  Let  him  roar  again,  let  him  roar  again.' '  Then  lest  he 
should  frighten  the  Duchess  and  the  ladies — "  I  will  aggravate 


The  Winter  of  1863-64  241 

my  voice  so  that  I  will  roar  you  as  gently  as  any  sucking  dove  ; 
I  will  roar  you  an  'twere  any  nightingale." 

The  publication  by  the  French  Foreign  Office  of  the  report  by 
M.  Reinack  of  the  Commission  charged  to  inquire  into  "  Les  Ori- 
gines  Diplomatiques  de  la  Guerre  de  1870  "  has  thrown  a  flood 
of  light  upon  the  negotiations  which  took  place  in  regard  to  the 
Danish  Question  of  1863-4  ;  it  is  not  pleasant  reading  for  English- 
men ;  a  review  of  the  first  two  volumes  of  these  revelations  in 
the  Figaro  of  the  6th  of  September,  1910,  by  the  Comte 
d'Haussonville  shows  the  position  to  which  England  had  fallen 
in  the  Councils  of  Europe.  "  L'Angleterre  s'agite  "  (this  is,  of 
course,  the  historic  present),  "  mais  ce  n'est  pas  un  Dieu  qui  la 
mene.  Ce  n'est  personne.  On  ne  sent  point,  comme  a  certains 
moments  de  son  histoire,  la  main  ferme  d'un  veritable  homme 
d'etat :  au  debut  du  dix-neuvieme  siecle  un  Pitt ;  a  la  fin  un 
Disraeli  qui  sait  ce  qu'il  se  propose  et  ou  il  veut  conduire  son 
pays." 

Nobody  was  frightened  by  Lord  Russell's  roaring,  least  of  all 
Bismarck — he  knew  how  soon  the  voice  would  be  "  aggravated." 
"  L'Angleterre  ne  fera  pas  la  guerre,"  he  said  to  M.  de  Talleyrand, 
the  French  Ambassador  at  Berlin.  Foreign  statesmen  knew 
that  Lord  Palmerston  was  now  grown  old.  He  was  no  longer 
the  doughty  champion  of  the  Don  Pacifico  days,  when  he  elec- 
trified the  House  of  Commons  and  the  world  with  the  famous 
Civis  Romanus  sum  speech  ;  moreover,  he  was  hampered  by  the 
shufflings  of  his  Foreign  Secretary,  and  in  the  background  was 
the  Queen,  never  a  negligible  quantity  in  foreign  affairs,  whom 
all  men  knew  to  be  a  strong  ally  of  Germany,  and  who,  still  ani- 
mated by  the  spirit  of  the  dead  Prince  Consort,  naturally  felt  with 
Germany.  Read  what  the  Prince  Consort  wrote  to  the  King  of 
Prussia  on  the  i2th  March,  1861 :  "  My  hope,  like  that  of  most 
German  patriots,  rests  upon  Prussia,  rests  upon  you  "  ("  Life  of 
the  Prince  Consort,"  Vol.  V.,  p.  314).  Those  words  in  the  mouth 
of  the  Prince  were  intelligible  enough,  but  why  should  Lord  Russell 
be  a  German  patriot  ? 

And  so  we  drifted,  whither  we  knew  not,  though  others  did. 
M.  de  Massignac,  a  clever  diplomatist,  a  man  whom  I  knew  well, 
VOL.  i  16 


242  Memories 

who  was  French  Charge  d' Affaires  at  St.  Petersburg,  on  the  gth 
of  February,  1864,  sent  a  despatch  to  M.  Drouyn  de  Lhuys  in  which 
he  recorded  certain  confidential  talks  which  he  had  had  with  some 
of  his  German  colleagues  upon  the  situation.  He  urged  that  if 
the  Duchies  were  to  unite  themselves  with  Prussia,  it  would  be 
unwise  for  France  to  interfere,  because  such  a  territorial  exten- 
sion would  enable  Germany  to  create  a  navy,  which  in  given  cir- 
cumstances might  unite  with  the  fleets  of  the  other  Continental 
Powers  to  destroy  England's  preponderant  power  at  sea  !  ("  Origines 
Diplomatiques,"  etc.). 

Meanwhile,  England  and  Prussia  were  both  courting  Louis 
Napoleon.  Palmerston  expressed  to  the  Prince  de  la  Tour 
d'Auvergne,  the  French  Ambassador  in  London,  his  regret  that 
Great  Britain  and  France  could  not  come  to  a  complete  under- 
standing, but  Lord  Russell  kept  the  same  Ambassador  hi  a  state 
of  mystification.  Bismarck,  on  the  other  hand,  was  maintaining 
such  intimate  relations  with  M.  de  Talleyrand  as  to  draw  from 
Drouyn  de  Lhuys  the  warmest  congratulations.  The  Emperor 
stroked  his  barbiche  and  held  the  balance.  Poor  Emperor  !  It 
was  for  him  that  the  witches'  cauldron  was  bubbling. 

And  Denmark  ?  In  the  Spring  of  1863,  King  Frederic 
the  Seventh  had  died,  and  King  Christian,  the  father  of  our  Queen 
Alexandra,  ruled  in  his  stead.  Seldom  has  a  monarch  been  called 
to  the  throne  hi  more  untoward  circumstances.  Only  eleven 
years  had  passed  since  all  the  great  Powers — Prussia  and  Austria, 
of  course,  included — gathered  together  in  conclave  in  London,  had 
solemnly  bound  themselves  to  guarantee  the  integrity  of  his 
dominions. 

Such  engagements  we  are  now  told  by  the  German  Chancellor 
are  "  scraps  of  paper  !  "  Only  eleven  years  !  It  was  no  archaic 
instrument  which  the  decay  of  many  decades  had  rendered  obsolete. 
What  had  occurred  in  the  meantime  to  make  it  invalid  ?  Nothing, 
absolutely  nothing  !  Yet  hi  spite  of  the  most  sacred  obligations 
of  the  Powers  which  had  pledged  themselves  to  maintain  his  suc- 
cession and  the  rights  of  his  kingdom,  two  of  those  .very  Powers 
were  invading  his  country  to  despoil  him  of  his  territory,  and 
the  rest  treacherously  and  cowardly  deserted  him.  It  was  a  cruel 


The  Winter  of  1863-64  243 

betrayal,  and  as  if  to  accentuate  it  by  a  stroke  of  bitter  irony, 
France  sent  General  Fleury,  the  Emperor's  confidential  friend, 
England  Lord  Wodehouse,  on  special  missions  to  congratulate  the 
new  King  on  his  accession.  Fleury,  the  dandy  courtier,  passing 
through  Berlin,  was  handsomely  flattered  and  fooled  by  Bis- 
marck ;  Lord  Wodehouse  carried  pouches  full  of  excellent  advice 
from  Lord  Russell — advice  the  neglect  of  which  King  Christian 
was  assured  might  lead  to  dire  consequences.  The  King  acted 
according  to  Lord  Russell's  advice,  but  none  the  less,  when  the 
great  catastrophe  came,  he  was  left  to  his  fate. 

Such,  briefly  sketched,  was  the  position  of  the  Danish  negotia- 
tions at  the  end  of  1863  and  the  beginning  of  1864.  The  details 
can  easily  be  filled  in  from  our  own  Blue  Books,  from  Lord  Salis- 
bury's masterly  essays,  and  from  the  "  Origines  Diplomatiques 
de  la  Guerre  de  1870."  I  have  only  tried  to  say  so  much  as  should 
serve  to  make  intelligible  what  follows. 

It  must  have  been  about  the  gth  or  loth  of  February  :  I  did 
not  note  the  exact  date  in  my  papers  :  a  cruel  blizzard,  cruel  even 
for  St.  Petersburg,  lasting  many  hours,  had  swept  the  streets  clear 
of  all  passenger  traffic.  Only  the  direst  necessity  would  goad 
men  to  face  it.  As  good  luck  would  have  it,  there  was  for  a  wonder 
no  function  or  entertainment  that  night,  so  I  hugged  my  comfort 
in  my  rooms  and  went  to  bed  early,  thinking  with  a  sense  of  superi- 
ority tempered  by  pity  of  the  poor  wretches  who  must  be  outside 
wrestling  with  the  bitterness  of  the  weather.  Hardly  had  I  laid 
myself  down  when  there  came  a  violent  knocking  at  my  outer 
door.  My  servant  had  long  since  gone  home,  so  there  was  nothing 
for  it  but  to  get  up  and  see  what  was  the  matter.  It  was  the 
Chancery  messenger,  shivering  and  smothered  from  head  to  foot 
with  snow,  bringing  me  a  note  from  my  chief,  Lord  Napier  : 
"  Please  come  at  once." 

I  went  back  into  my  bedroom  and  dressed  again,  looking  regret- 
fully at  my  warm  bed,  in  which  only  a  few  minutes  earlier  I  had 
been  pitying  the  victims  of  whom  now  I  was  to  be  one.  When  I 
got  outside  I  was  almost  blinded  by  the  snow,  driven  by  a  wind 
which  it  was  hard  to  stand  against.  It  seemed  more  than  doubtful 
whether  I  should  be  able  to  reach  the  Embassy,  which  was  about 
VOL.  i  16* 


244  Memories 

half  a  mile  off.  All  at  once,  out  of  the  unwholesome,  yellow,  almost 
lurid  darkness  my  good  angel  sent  a  belated  Isvoshtchik  crawling 
along,  visible  only  a  few  yards  off.  I  hailed  him,  hardly  hoping  that 
he  would  come  to  my  call ;  however,  the  promise  of  a  good  pour- 
boire  tempted  him,  and  we  crept  miserably  through  the  storm  to 
the  Embassy.  I  never  was  out  in  so  weird  a  night.  As  I  left  the 
little  sleigh  I  shook  off  many  pounds'  weight  of  snow  from  fur  cap 
and  coat. 

I  found  Lord  Napier  walking  about  his  room  in  his  dressing- 
gown,  evidently  rather  uneasy  ;  he  seemed  to  have  a  sort  of  fore- 
warning of  something  out  of  the  common  and  disagreeable.  A 
telegraphic  despatch  in  cypher  had  come  in,  and  he  wished  to  have 
it  deciphered  immediately.  It  was  truly  a  momentous  document 
—nothing  less  than  an  instruction  to  call  upon  Prince  Gortchakoff 
at  once  and  to  let  him  know  that  England  would  not  interfere  on 
behalf  of  Denmark.  Lord  Napier  was  eagerly  watching  over  my 
shoulder  as  one  by  one  the  fateful  words  revealed  themselves,  and 
when  the  telegram  was  fully  before  us  we  looked  at  one  another  in 
dismay. 

"  But,"  said  my  chief,  "  only  yesterday  when  I  saw  the  Prince 
I  told  him  that  I  believed  that  there  was  no  change  in  the  policy 
of  Her  Majesty's  Government,  and  now  I  have  to  give  him  this 
message.  It  is  very  embarrassing  !  Where  is  the  Prince  ?  Do 
you  know  ?  " 

"  He  is  at  Tsarskoe  Selo,"  I  answered. 

"  Well,  I  shall  have  to  go  out  by  the  first  train  to-morrow 
morning." 

It  was  a  very  awkward  moment  for  Lord  Napier  and  he  felt  the 
falseness  of  the  position  acutely,  but  he  was  so  truly  attached  to 
Lord  Russell  personally  that  he  never  would  say  a  word  against 
him. 

The  next  day  I  was  in  the  Chancery  when  Lord  Napier  came  back 
from  Tsarskoe  Selo.  He  beckoned  me  into  his  private  room. 

"  Well,"  I  asked,  "  what  did  the  Prince  say  ?  " 

"  It  was  not  a  pleasant  interview,"  answered  my  chief.  "  When 
tne  Prince  had  read  the  telegram  he  folded  it  up  and  handed  it  back 
to  me  saying,  '  Alors,  milord,  je  mets  de  cote  la  supposition  que 


The  Winter  of  1863-64  245 

1'Angleterre  fasse  jamais  la  guerre  pour  une  question  d'honneur.' 
Pretty  words  for  an  English  Ambassador  to  listen  to  !  " 

Lord  Napier  was  deeply  moved,  as  well  he  might  be.  They  were 
indeed  "  pretty  words,"  and  in  them,  I  think,  we  may  see  what 
lay  at  the  bottom  of  Prince  Gortchakoffs  subsequent  foreign  policy — 
especially  in  Central  Asia — until  ^he  was  finally  checkmated  by  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  at  the  Berlin  Congress  in  1878.  On  that  morning  of 
February.  1864,  the  Prince's  well-known  keenness  for  an  alliance 
with  England  died  the  death  ;  in  his  estimation  England  need  no 
longer  be  taken  into  account. 

Bismarck  had  now  a  free  hand.  His  carefully  laid  schemes, 
of  which  the  war  in  the  Duchies  was  only  an  instalment,  were  all 
to  bear  their  fruit.  Austria  was  to  be  crippled,  France  to  be  humbled 
and  dismembered,  Germany  to  be  a  naval  Power  of  the  first 
magnitude.  And  England  ? 

That  is  how  the  keel  of  the  first  Dreadnought  was  laid  at 
St.  Petersburg  in  the  month  of  February,  1864.  The  Baltic  and  the 
North  Sea  are  united  as  Siamese  twins.  Germany,  possessed  of 
ports  and  a  huge  navy,  is  straining  every  nerve  to  wrest  the  trident 
from  the  hands  of  Great  Britain,  and  the  tragedy  of  1914,  which 
sooner  or  later  was  bound  to  come,  is  even  now  upon  us.  Black  is 
the  ingratitude  of  mankind  !  There  is  no  statue  of  Lord  Russell, 
the  great  benefactor,  the  true  founder  of  the  German  navy,  standing 
tinter  den  Linden  in  Berlin. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THROUGH    THE    WINTER 

T  T  APPILY  our  life  at  the  Embassy  was  not  all  made  up  of 
A  1  political  miscarriages  and  diplomatic  rebuffs.  On  the  6th 
(i8th)  of  January  we  all  received  a  summons  to  attend  the 
ceremony  of  the  blessing  of  the  waters. 

For  some  days  past  a  little  shrine  of  green  wood  had  been  in  process 
of  construction  on  the  side  of  the  Neva  opposite  the  Winter  Palace  ; 
a  picture  of  a  saint  surmounted  it  on  each  side,  the  place  of  honour 
being  assigned  to  the  image  of  St.  John  the  Baptist.  As  soon  as 
daylight  broke  on  the  6th  vast  crowds  of  people  of  both  sexes,  soldiers 
in  many  uniforms,  and,  of  course,  as  at  all  public  ceremonies,  dogs, 
were  flocking  to  catch  as  near  a  sight  as  possible  of  the  shrine. 

We,  the  Corps  Diplomatique,  were  bidden  to  the  Winter  Palace 
at  noon.  The  drive  through  the  streets  was  fascinating.  The 
weather  was  glorious  and  the  glistening  city  was  at  its  brightest,  the 
soldiers  in  all  their  bravery  giving  a  kaleidoscopic  glamour  to  the 
surging  mob,  mostly  clad  in  sad-coloured  sheepskins  with  the  wool 
inside.  The  wild-looking  Georgians  in  their  native  dress,  Cossacks 
of  the  Don,  fierce,  swarthy  horsemen  from  the  Caucasus  in  their 
shirts  of  mail  and  shining  armour,  striking  a  medieval  note  in  the 
concert  of  men.  The  Kurnos  regiment  of  the  Emperor  Paul,  every 
man  with  a  snub  nose,  and  wearing  the  old  peaked  brazen  shako  of 
our  Guards  in  Queen  Anne's  reign,  each  shako  showing  a  bullet  hole 
in  it,  a  memorial  of  a  bullet  which,  aimed  at  the  Tsar,  found  its  billet 
in  the  tall  cap  of  one  of  his  faithful,  snub-nosed  guardsmen,  who 
dashed  forward  just  in  time  to  save  the  Tsar's  life  at  the  expense  of 
his  own ;  in  contrast  to  these  were  the  grenadiers,  with  heavy 

246 


Through  the  Winter  247 


bearskin  caps  and  plumes.  The  chevalier-gardes  in  white  tunics, 
their  helmets  and  cuirasses  dazzling  in  the  winter  sun — all  the 
panoply  of  war  set  in  the  flaming  glory  of  ecclesiastical  and  imperial 
splendour.  Could  this  be  Europe  in  the  nineteenth  century  ? 

From  the  room  in  the  Palace  in  which  we  had  assembled  we  were 
ushered  off  to  a  side  entrance  to  see  the  priestly  procession  form  to 
meet  the  Tsar.  It  was  an  imposing  ceremony.  The  air  was  heavy 
with  the  penetrating  fumes  of  incense,  and  in  the  distance  we  could 
hear  the  mysterious  effect  of  the  deep  bass  voices  of  the  priests  and 
deacons — those  wonderful  bass  voices  for  which  they  are  chosen — 
chanting  the  impressive  litanies  of  the  Greek  Church.  Nearer  and 
nearer  they  came,  the  music  becoming  clearer  and  more  distinct, 
but  intensely  reverential,  until  at  last  the  great  procession  of  Church 
dignitaries  passed  before  us ;  it  was  stirringly  solemn. 

Priests  in  red,  priests  in  purple,  priests  in  white,  and  priests  in 
violet,  all  as  resplendent  as  a  profusion  of  gold  embroidery  and 
jewels  could  make  them — very  imposing  with  their  long  white 
beards  and  hair.  One  deacon,  a  giant  in  stature,  with  hair  and 
beard  reaching  half-way  down  to  his  waist,  had  a  deep  voice  which, 
pealing  through  the  corridors  like  the  rolling*  notes  of  a  bass 
trombone,  made  the  windows  rattle  again.  Last  of  all  came  the 
Bishops  and  the  Metropolitan,  like  the  King's  daughter  "  all  glorious 
within,"  clad  in  raiment  that  made  them  seem  like  a  vision  out  of 
the  Apocalypse.  Altogether  a  sight  not  to  be  forgotten. 

We  followed  the  procession  through  the  great  State  apartments 
of  the  Palace,  each  room  with  a  guard  of  honour  from  a  different 
regiment,  until  the  priests  and  bishops  branched  off  to  one  of  the 
principal  staircases  to  go  round  the  Palace  ;  and  when  next  we  saw 
them  they  were  accompanied  by  the  Tsar,  looking  magnificent  on  a 
grey  charger,  followed  by  his  brothers  and  sons,  and  a  brilliantly 
mounted  staff  of  the  chief  officials.  Of  the  ceremony  itself  we  could 
ee  nothing.  It  consists  in  the  dipping  of  a  cross  by  the  Tsar  into 
the  water,  through  a  hole  made  in  the  ice,  and  during  the  liturgy 
which  follows,  and  lasts  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  all  the  people, 
including  the  soldiers,  remain  uncovered.  Even  the  Tsar  must  bare 

*  Winter  bottom,  the  great  trombone  player,  once  said  to  me,  "  The  notes 
of  a  G  trombone  ought  to  go  rolling  through  Exeter  Hall  like  footballs." 


248  Memories 

his  head,  so  the  late  Emperor,  who  was  bald,  used  to  wear  a  wig  for 
the  occasion.  It  was  luckily  not  very  cold,  but  there  was  a  keen 
wind  blowing,  and  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the  thermometer  is  a  bad 
judge  of  temperature  at  St.  Petersburg,  for  the  wind  is  man's  worst 
enemy,  and  the  days  when  the  mercury  is  at  its  lowest  are  far  more 
tolerable  than  those  on  which  there  are  a  few  degrees  of  frost  and 
bit  ng  blasts  that  race  down  the  river.  Happily  we  diplomatists 
had  two  stout  glass  windows  between  us  and  the  weather,  so  we  had 
no  cause  to  complain. 

As  soon  as  the  waters  had  been  duly  blessed,  and  the  service  was 
over,  out  burst  a  cannonade  from  the  fortress  and  from  guns  placed 
at  regular  intervals  on  the  opposite  bank  of  the  Neva  ;  then  the 
Emperor  and  his  staff  mounted  their  horses  and  wended  their  way 
back,  the  priests  carrying  the  blessed  water  and  sprinkling  the 
troops  with  it  as  they  passed  in  front  of  them.  The  Empress  being 
ill  and  unable  to  attend  the  ceremony,  a  golden  goblet  was  filled  with 
the  water  and  carried  to  her  for  her  use. 

We  were  all  invited  to  luncheon,  and  after  that  there  was  a  review 
of  the  Imperial  Guards,  thirty-four  thousand  men  and  eighty- four 
pieces  of  cannon  ;  a  quite  magnificent  display. 

As  soon  as  the  blessing  of  the  waters  and  the  review  were  finished, 
the  mujiks  were  all  allowed  access  to  the  consecrated  hole  in  the  ice. 
Into  this  they  dipped  themselves,  fully  clothed,  to  the  end  that  they 
might  purify  themselves  from  the  excesses  of  their  holidays — more 
particularly  from  the  sin  of  wearing  masks,  which,  being  forbidden 
by  their  religion,  is  one  in  which  ihe  orthodox  take  a  special  delight. 
Dripping  icicles,  but  pure,  and  of  a  contented  conscience,  the  mujik 
rushes  from  his  freezing  bath  to  his  poor  home,  there  to  work,  and, 
as  soon  as  Lent  comes,  starve,  till  Easter  shall  set  him  free  once 
more. 

If  all  that  one  hears  be  true,  the  Russia  of  to-day  is  very  different 
from  what  it  was  at  the  time  of  which  I  am  writing.  The  great 
hospitable  houses  are,  so  I  am  told,  many  of  them  shut  up.  The 
Winter  Palace  itself  is  no  longer  the  setting  of  pageants  and  festi- 
vities of  which  the  slaves  of  the  ring  and  the  lamp  might  have  been 
the  stage-managers  and  chamberlains.  Misfortune,  sorrow  and 
crue  anxieties  have  racked  the  Imperial  Family,  and  the  gaiety  of  a 


Through  the  Winter  249 


nat  on  has  been  cl  psed.  One  can  but  hope  that  it  may  be  only  a 
passing  eclipse,  only  a  temporary  cloud,  through  which  in  years  to 
come  the  sun  may  sh  ne  more  brightly  than  before.*  It  was 
radiant  in  my  day. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  anything  more  sumptuous  than  a 
great  Court  ball.  There  were  one  thousand  eight  hundred  guests, 
themselves  all  as  brilliant  as  the  glory  of  diamonds  and  rubies  and 
pearls  and  the  most  magnificent  uniforms  could  make  them.  The 
great  white  and  gold  ball-room,  with  an  orchestra  at  each  end, 
flanked  by  arches  leading  into  a  winter  garden  rich  in  palms  and 
tree-ferns  and  flowers  and  all  the  wonders  of  tropical  vegetation, 
was  lighted  by  twenty-seven  thousand  candles  arranged  spirally 
round  the  pillars  and  in  crystal  chandeliers. 

The  Corps  Diplomatique  were  ushered  into  the  ad  joining  drawing- 
rooms,  where  they  were  received  by  old  Count  Ribeaupierre,  the 
grand  maitre  de  la  Cour,  himself  a  notable  link  with  the  past,  for 
he  had  been  page  of  honour  to  the  Empress  Catherine.  Presently 
the  doors  were  thrown  open  and  the  Imperial  family  trooped  in  ; 
the  Emperor  as  usual  very  regal,  half  a  head  taller  than  any  man 
in  the  room,  wearing  a  white  hussar  uniform  trimmed  with  gold  and 
black  sables  ;  the  Empress  covered  with  the  spoils  of  Ophir  and 
Golconda.  They  went  round  our  circle,  stopping  to  speak  to  the 
chiefs  of  missions  and  their  wives.  It  was  a  lesson  to  watch  that 
gracious  Lady  and  the  winning  way  in  which  she  made  her  guests 
welcome  with  a  charm  that  could  only  come  from  the  sweetest 
nature.  When  the  little  reception  was  over  we  followed  Their 
Majesties  into  the  ball-room.  It  really  was  a  dazzling  sight.  At 
a  given  moment  all  the  one  thousand  eight  hundred  guests  sat 
down  to  supper  at  the  same  time  ;  only  the  Emperor  remained 
standing,  himself  looking  after  the  comfort  of  his  guests. 

An  entertainment  even  more  wonderful,  on  account  of  its  exquisite 
daintiness,  was  a  smaller  ball  of  only  about  three  hundred  and  fifty 
guests  ;  it  led,  moreover,  to  some  amusing  incidents.  The  order 
from  the  Court  was  that  civilians  were  not  to  wear  uniform,  so  with 
two  brilliant  exceptions,  the  diplomatic  body  arrived  as  black  as 
rooks.  The  brilliant  two  were  General  Cassius  Clay  and  the  Due 
*  Written  some  years  ago  (1915). 


250  Memories 

d'Osuna,  the  Spanish  Ambassador,  who,  conceiving  themselves  to 
be  soldiers,  took  it  for  granted  that  the  order  did  not  apply  to  them  ; 
the  General  especially  was  full  of  military  ardour  as  regarded  his 
clothes,  so  he  came  in  a  nondescript  blue  coat,  a  yellow  nankeen 
waistcoat,  white  trousers  and  something  in  his  hand  which  he  said 
was  a  forage-cap.  The  Due  d'Osuna,  on  the  other  hand,  appeared 
in  a  gorgeous  uniform,  his  breast  plastered  all  over  with  stars  and 
decorations  (the  only  wonder  being  that  he  did  not  wear  some  on 
his  back  as  well) ,  his  little  legs  incased  in  white  leather  breeches  and 
jack-boots.  He  was  a  great  character  and  really  a  very  charming 
personality ;  fabulously  rich,  an  ambassador  without  pay,  he 
hospitably  kept  open  house  for  his  staff,  even  when  he  was  on  leave. 
His  many  chateaux  were  maintained  in  the  same  sumptuous  way, 
whether  he  were  in  Spain  or  abroad,  ready  to  receive  him  at  any 
moment,  and  so,  while  his  agents  accumulated  good  fortunes,  when 
his  death  came  he  was  reputed  to  have  well-nigh  run  through  every- 
thing. The  ship  had  too  many  leaks.  He  was  several  times  over 
grandee  of  Spain,  and  so  had  the  right  to  wear  any  number  of  hats 
in  the  presence  of  his  sovereign.  He  is  alluded  to  in  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  letter  to  his  sister,  giving  an  account  of  Queen  Victoria's 
coronation.  "He  is  a  great  dandy,  and  looks  like  Philip  the 
Second,  but  though  the  only  living  descendant  of  the  Borgias,  he 
has  the  reputation  of  being  very  amiable.  When  he  was  last  at 
Paris  he  attended  a  representation  of  Victor  Hugo's  Lucrezia  Borgia. 
She  says  in  one  of  the  scenes  :  '  Great  crimes  are  in  our  blood.'  All 
his  friends  looked  at  him  with  an  expression  of  fear.  '  But  the 
blood  has  degenerated,'  he  said,  '  for  I  have  committed  only 
weaknesses.'  ' 

The  dear  little  man's  great  foible  was  vanity,  concentrated  in 
the  admiration  of  his  own  tiny  Spanish  feet.  "  Oh  !  moi,"  said 
a  little  French  actress  one  evening.  "  Quand  j'ai  besoin  de  deux  ou 
trois  cents  roubles,  je  m'en  vais  trouver  le  Due  d'Osuna ;  je  lui 
fais  un  doigt  de  cour  et  je  lui  dis,  en  regardant  ses  pieds :  '  Ah  ! 
comme  ils  sont  jolis  !  II  n'y  a  que  Monsieur  le  Due  d'Osuna  pour 
avoir  ces  pieds-la — sont-ils  assez  mignons  !  '  Cela  ne  rate  jamais.  " 

Another  order  that  evening  was,  that  there  was  to  be  no  cere- 
mony as  to  going  in  to  supper.  We  were  to  go  as  we  pleased  and 


Through  the  Winter  251 


with  whom  we  pleased.  Precedence  was  abolished  for  the  night. 
We  danced  in  the  white  drawing-room ;  towards  midnight  the 
heavy  folding  doors  were  thrown  open,  and  hi  what  had  been  the 
great  ball-room  of  a  few  nights  before  was  laid  out  quite  the  most 
artistically  perfect  banquet  that  could  be  imagined — once  more 
the  Jins  of  the  "  Arabian  Nights  "  had  been  at  work.  In  the  great 
hall  and  the  jardin  d'hiver  were  thirty-five  supper-tables,  each  to 
hold  ten  guests,  each  dressed  round  an  orange  tree  in  full  fruit. 
The  illumination,  with  the  usual  fabulous  number  of  candles,  was 
resplendent.  It  was  an  entrancing  sight.  As  we  went  in  every- 
body uttered  a  little  exclamation  of  surprise  !  "  Mon  Dieu  !  que 
c'est  joli !  "  "  Mais  c'est  ravissant !  "  "  Oui,"  said  Georges  Du 
Luart,  "  c'est  positivement  feerique  !  "  "  Ah  !  "  said  the  Due 
d'Osuna,  in  his  Spanish  French,  "  n'est-ce  pas  que  c'est  zoli !  C'est 
1'uniforme  du  reziment  que  ze  commande."  The  good  Duke,  who 
was  rather  deaf,  had  taken  all  the  enthusiasm  as  a  well-merited 
tribute  to  his  own  personal  appearance. 

Du  Luart,  now  (1915)  the  Marquis  du  Luart,  one  of  the  greatest 
authorities  in  France  on  sport  and  venerie,  and  I  had  arranged 
to  sit  together  ;  but  somehow  we  got  separated  and  had  to  take 
our  chance  of  places.  After  wandering  about  I  found  myself  at  a 
table  where  I  knew  no  one,  but  as  usual,  the  other  guests  were 
most  kind  and  amiable  in  their  welcome  to  the  stranger. 

The  gentleman  next  me  began  asking  me  all  manner  of  questions 
about  England  and  English  people  ;  it  turned  out  that  he  had 
known  my  father,  Charles  Greville  (of  the  memoirs),  and  his  brother 
Henry,  Lord  Granville,  and  many  other  people  whom  I  knew  well. 
He  was  Monsieur  Jean  Tolstoy,  Postmaster-General,  a  member 
of  the  Cabinet,  and  a  personal  friend  of  the  Emperor.  Our  ac- 
quaintance did  not  end  there  ;  for  he  took  many  opportunities 
of  showing  me  civilities  during  the  remainder  of  my  stay  in  Russia. 
It  was  a  curious  accident,  for  I  do  not  suppose  that  there  was 
another  Russian  in  the  crowd  who  knew  my  father. 

During  the  whole  time  that  the  supper  lasted  the  Emperor 
kept  walking  round  the  different  tables,  with  a  kindly  word  of 
welcome  for  many  of  his  guests,  and  anxious  to  see  that  all  were 
well  served.  There  was  not  a  speck  of  condescension  about  him 


252  Memories 

just  the  anxiety  and  care  of  a  most  courteous  host.  The  Emperor 
Alexander  was  certainly  one  of  the  greatest  gentlemen  that  I  ever 
saw  in  any  rank  of  life. 

A  figure  of  mark  at  these  Court  functions  was  the  Prussian 
Ambassador,  Count  Redern,  who,  with  the  help  of  his  Countess 
and  a  very  charming  daughter,  himself  kept  one  of  the  pleasantest 
and  best  mounted  houses  in  the  town.  His  appointment  to 
St.  Petersburg  was  said  to  have  been  made  for  a  unique  reason. 
He  had  been  named  to  one  of  the  smallest  European  Courts.  Now 
he  possessed  a  service  of  silver  plate  of  which  he  was  passing  proud, 
and  it  seemed  to  him  to  be  utterly  incongruous  that  its  glory  should 
be  thrown  away  upon  a  very  tiny  Scandinavian  capital.  "  Ich  ! 
Mit  meiner  Vaisselle !  he  is  said  to  have  exclaimed  with  indigna- 
tion when  the  appointment  was  notified  to  him.  The  objection 
was  held  to  be  unanswerable,  so  he  and  his  service  of  plate  were 
sent  to  cast  lustre  upon  the  capital  of  the  Tsar.  If,  following  upon 
Bismarck,  he  did  not  seem  to  be  diplomatically  an  eagle,  he  was, 
at  any  rate,  a  great  social  success,  and  everybody  liked  him. 

It  seems  as  if  I  had  no  story  to  write  but  what  relates  to  feasts 
and  splendour  and  the  glory  of  the  Emperor.  I  may  have  been 
monotonous.  But  all  this  magnificence  cannot  forbid  the  door 
to  sorrow.  Even  yet  my  readers  are  like  the  Queen  of  Sheba, 
"  the  half  was  not  told  them."  But  in  this  great  stately  home 
of  the  Tsars  there  is  a  chamber  of  grief,  a  corner  which  no  man 
can  penetrate  without  emotion  ;  it  is  the  reverse  of  a  brilliant 
medal. 

One  day  I  was  taken  by  one  of  my  friends  about  the  Court  to 
see  the  apartment  which  was  occupied  by  the  Emperor  Nicholas. 
It  was  the  eve  of  the  anniversary  of  his  death,  just  nine  years  ago. 
There  was  no  magnificence,  no  luxury  here  ;  nothing  but  Spartan 
simplicity — the  heroic  simplicity  of  the  man  whom  he  took  as  his 
ideal,  the  Duke  of  Wellington — just  two  shabby  little  rooms  on 
the  ground  floor  of  the  Winter  Palace,  which  elsewhere  glittered 
with  all  the  treasures  of  fairyland  ;  the  outer  room  was  furnished 
with  a  wardrobe  and  decorated  with  a  few  drawings  of  fortifica- 
tions. Here  the  mightiest  ministers  and  generals  waited  for  their 
audiences,  which  were  granted  in  the  Emperor's  sanctum — a 


Through  the  Winter  253 


room  no  bigger  than  the  quarters  of  a  subaltern  in  Chatham  Barracks, 
which  served  as  bedroom,  dressing-room  and  study  all  in  one. 
The  furniture  was  to  match ;  on  the  walls  hung  a  few  French  prints, 
a  portrait  or  two,  and  some  bad  sketches  of  reviews  and  sham 
fights  ;  at  the  head  of  his  bed  the  likeness  of  his  beautiful  and 
favourite  daughter  Olga,  in  the  uniform  of  the  regiment  which  he 
gave  her.  Books  were  represented  by  a  collection  of  caricatures  ; 
a  narrow  camp  bedstead,  the  mattress  as  hard  as  stone ;  spread 
upon  the  bed  the  military  cloak  which  had  served  him — so  it  was 
said — for  fifty  years,  a  simple  grey  cloak  with  a  red  collar,  no 
better  than  that  of  a  common  soldier  ;  his  tunic  was  out  ready  to 
put  on,  his  casque  and  sword  handy.  His  solitary  brush  and 
comb,  his  toothbrush  and  shaving  tackle,  were  ready  for  use— it 
was  as  if  the  man  who  had  died  nine  years  ago  had  only  left  that 
morning  and  was  expected  back  in  the  evening.  At  one  side  of 
the  room  stood  the  writing-table,  with  drawers  on  each  side.  Here 
he  used  to  sit  with  his  ministers  facing  him,  and  I  fancy  that  some 
of  our  acquaintances  could  tell  of  awkward  moments  passed  at 
that  table.  On  it  lay  his  notepaper,  inkstand,  pens,  and  the 
almanack  for  1855  ! 

Everything  just  as  he  left  it — every  single  thing  save  one  only 
—a  small  and  beautiful  pencil  drawing  of  his  head  as  it  lay  in 
death  upon  the  pillow.  Altogether  a  pathetic  sight !  and  it  all 
seemed  so  intimate,  as  if  the  handsome,  dead  giant  might  at  any 
moment  come  stalking  into  the  room,  and  resent  the  intrusion. 

It  was  the  fashion  among  Russians  in  1864  to  talk  of  Nicholas 
as  a  tyrant  before  whom  in  his  lifetime  they  crouched  in  terror, 
and  of  Alexander's  accession  to  power  as  a  release  from  bondage. 
No  doubt  in  a  measure  that  was  true.  At  the  same  time  it  is  no 
less  true  that  those  who  knew  him  best  loved  him  dearly.  The 
fierceness  of  his  will,  no  less  than  his  personal  beauty  and  his  charm, 
appealed.  Where  he  chose  he  was  irresistible.  He  was  one  of 
those  magnetic  men  whose  power  over  the  hearts  and  affections 
of  others  is  almost  superhuman — there  are  men,  one  or  two  in  a 
century,  who  walk  upon  the  earth  as  Gods  to  be  worshipped. 

One  night  there  was  a  small  dinner  at  Lord  Napier's,  just  the 
members  of  the  Embassy  and  one  Russian  guest,  Admiral  Greig, 


254  Memories 

the  descendant  of  one  of  the  many  Scots  who  came  over  to  Russia 
and  took  service  there  in  the  eighteenth  century.  His  old  Scottish 
connection  put  him  on  terms  of  very  friendly  intercourse  with  Lord 
Napier.  That  evening  he  told  us  the  story  of  how  he  had  carried 
the  news  of  the  battle  of  the  Alma  to  the  Emperor  Nicholas. 

Being  soldier  as  well  as  sailor,  General  as  well  as  Admiral,  he 
had  been  aide-de-camp  to  Prince  Gortchakoff  (the  brother  of  the 
Vice-Chancellor),  who  was  commander-in-chief  of  the  army  hi 
the  Crimea.  At  the  end  of  the  day  of  the  2Oth  of  September,  after 
the  battle  of  the  Alma,  the  Prince  sent  him  to  convey  the  intelligence 
of  the  disaster  to  the  Tsar,  with  orders  to  tell  no  one  what  had 
happened  till  his  Majesty  should  have  received  him.  It  was  not  a 
pleasant  mission.  He  posted  night  and  day  till  he  reached  the 
railroad,  and  at  every  halt  for  change  of  horses  the  people  crowded 
round  him,  eager  for  news  from  the  front ;  but  he  uttered  not  a 
word.  At  last,  after  a  long,  weary  journey  he  reached  the  Palace, 
and  was  ushered  into  the  Tsar's  presence.  The  Tsar,  anticipating 
glorious  news  from  the  war,  sprang  forward  smiling  to  embrace 
him.  The  Admiral  started  aside  and  put  out  both  hands  with  the 
palms  outward  as  though  to  push  back  the  Emperor,  saying  : 
"  No,  your  Majesty  !  no  !  I  bring  bad  news/'  The  Emperor's 
whole  face  changed.  Nicholas  gave  him  one  of  those  steady  looks 
with  which  he  knew  how  to  petrify  the  man  who  displeased  him  ; 
deeply  angered,  he  demanded  to  know  the  worst. 

At  this  moment  the  Empress  came  in.  That  the  heights  of  the 
Alma  should  have  been  stormed  in  the  face  of  the  Russian  army 
was  something  that  the  Tsar  would  not,  could  not,  believe.  He 
strode  about  the  room,  furious ;  but  the  Empress  pacified  him 
and  gave  him  comfort.  At  last,  when  he  had  collected  himself, 
he  dismissed  the  Admiral,  telling  him  to  keep  strict  silence,  and 
to  tell  no  human  being  what  had  happened.  Admiral  Greig  very 
humbly  pointed  out  that  the  aide-de-camp  in  waiting  and  other 
gentlemen  were  outside  the  door  and  would  at  once  ply  him  with 
questions.  "  Tell  them  nothing,"  said  the  Emperor.  Here  the 
Empress  very  quietly  interposed  :  "  On  the  contrary,  tell  them 
every  thing.  There  is  no  use  in  concealing  the  truth.  I  wilUbe 
responsible." 


Through  the  Winter  255 


It  was  an  evil  moment  for  a  soldier.  He  was  sent  back  post- 
haste to  the  Crimea  in  disgrace  ;  but  when  he  was  badly  wounded 
afterwards,  the  Tsar  was  appeased  and  sent  him  a  message  to  say 
that  he  "  kissed  his  wound."  He  was  forgiven. 

The  reign  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas  had  not  been  a  happy  one. 
Indeed,  during  all  his  life  he  had  been  brought  face  to  face  with 
the  dangers  and  troubles  by  which  the  kingly  office  is  surrounded. 
He  was  but  five  years  old  when  his  father,  the  Emperor  Paul,  was 
murdered  ;  on  the  rather  mysterious  death  at  Taganrog  of  his 
brother,  Alexander  the  First — who  had  been  ailing  and  had  gone 
to  the  Crimea  for  a  rest,  but  whose  condition  had  not  given  rise  to 
alarm — his  next  brother,  Constantine,  having  previously  renounced 
his  claims,  he  was  called  to  the  throne  in  the  last  month  of  1825. 

As  his  very  first  act  he  was  forced  to  put  down  the  revolution 
of  the  Dekabrists,  the  Men  of  December,  officers  of  the  guards 
regiments  and  others,  the  chief  of  whom  was  one  Pestel,  who, 
under  the  pretence  of  putting  Constantine  on  the  throne,  were 
plotting  for  the  annihilation  of  the  Imperial  autocracy  and  the 
granting  of  a  constitution — perhaps  they  had  even  wider  views. 
The  rising  was  quelled  after  feeding  the  gallows  and  Siberia.  The 
moment  was  critical,  and  Nicholas  was  not  the  man  to  treat  rebellion 
with  rose-water.  The  reign  ended,  as  it  began,  with  a  tragedy. 
Men  said  that  the  Emperor  died  of  a  broken  heart ;  when  the 
army  which  he  loved  was  beaten,  the  ambition  of  a  lifetime  faded 
into  thin  air,  and  the  proud  spirit  was  humbled  hi  despair. 

In  the  country  where  no  historian  was  at  that  time  allowed  to 
write  that  the  Emperor  Paul  was  murdered,  but  only  that  he  died 
suddenly,  it  was  obvious  that  the  death  of  Nicholas  could  not 
openly  be  discussed.  But  there  were  whispers.  It  was  said  in 
secret  by  many  men  that  the  Emperor  did  not  die  a  natural  death. 
There  was  a  story  of  a  certain  German  physician  who  was  ordered 
by  the  Tsar  to  give  him  a  sure  and  painless  poison.  The  physician 
of  course  refused  and  left  St.  Petersburg.  On  the  following  day 
it  was  given  out  that  his  Majesty  was  ailing  ;  he  had  contracted  a 
chill.  Worse  bulletins  followed.  After  a  few  days,  it  was  an- 
nounced that  he  was  dangerously  ill ;  in  a  few  more  days  that  the 
end  had  come.  Heart  failure.  The  last  ukase  had  been  issued. 


256  Memories 

A  Russian  gentleman  whom  I  knew  well  told  me  that  as  a 
youngster  he  was  one  of  the  pages  of  honour  in  waiting  on  the 
day  when  the  death  of  the  Emperor  was  made  known  to  the  public. 
It  was  his  duty  that  night  to  watch  with  others  over  the  dead 
Tsar.  "  Figurez-vous,"  he  said,  "  que  quoique  nous  fussions  en 
Fevrier*  le  corps  sentait  deja  mauvais."  Taken  in  connection 
with  the  whisper  to  which  I  have  alluded,  this  seemed  to  me  not 
without  significance.  The  mystery  will  in  all  probability  never 
be  cleared  up;  but  at  this  distance  of  time  there  can  be  no  in- 
discretion in  alluding  to  a  story  which  was  widely  believed,  though 
it  was  only  uttered  in  hushed  tones  and  with  bated  breath. 

In  any  case,  for  the  death  of  the  great  Tsar  England  was  largely 
responsible.  When  he  paid  his  famous  visit  to  Queen  Victoria 
in  the  year  1844 — a  visit  still  commemorated  at  Newmarket 
by  the  Cesarewitch  handicap — English  statesmen  were  made 
thoroughly  aware  of  what  was  his  policy  in  the  Eastern  Question. 
He  made  no  secret  of  it.  His  ambition  was  to  drive  the  Turk, 
the  "  Sick  Man  "  of  Sir  Hamilton  Seymour's  despatches,  out  of 
Europe  and  to  occupy  Constantinople,  not,  as  he  asserted,  to  take 
it.  In  that,  no  doubt,  he  was  speaking  honestly  as  regarded  his 
intentions  at  that  time,  for  he  was  essentially  a  truthful  man  and, 
as  he  liked  to  say,  using  the  English  word  which  he  loved,  "  a 
gentleman." 

He  had  another  and,  to  him,  a  still  higher  and  more  cherished 
object — the  freeing  of  the  sacred  places  of  Palestine  from  the  hated 
presence  of  the  Moslem.  That,  with  him,  was  the  pious  dream  of 
a  devotee  who  carried  religion  almost  to  fanaticism.  No  Crusader 
was  ever  fired  by  a  holier  ardour.  That  shrines  of  such  awe-in- 
spiring sanctity  as  the  Holy  Sepulchre  and  Bethlehem  should  be 
under  the  domination  of  Islam  ;  that  disputes  among  the  priests 
of  the  Christian  creeds  in  the  Holy  Land  should  be  subjected  to 
the  arbitration  of  some  petty  Turkish  official,  were  to  this 
chivalrous  son  of  his  Church — to  this  Christian  gentleman — horrors 
too  hideous  for  contemplation.  To  Lord  Aberdeen,  in  these  matters, 
he  fully  opened  his  heart,  and  though  Lord  Aberdeen  was  careful 
to  avoid  definitely  committing  himself  to  any  "  hypothetical  en- 
*  1 8th  February,  old  style;  2nd  March,  new  style. 


Through  the  Winter  257 

gagement,"  the  Tsar  believed  firmly  that  he  was  receiving  nothing 
but  encouragement.  So  convinced  was  he  on  the  subject  that 
when  Lord  Aberdeen  became  Prime  Minister  he  thought  in  his 
happiness  that  the  tocsin  of  the  Turk  had  sounded.  But  when 
the  crucial  time  came,  England  failed  him,  and  cast  in  her  lot  with 
Louis  Napoleon,  to  whom  an  alliance  with  Great  Britain  gave  a 
much-needed  addition  of  prestige. 

The  "  Sick  Man  "  was  once  more  bolstered  up,  and  Nicholas, 
deceived  as  he  believed  himself  to  be — at  any  rate  foiled  in  his 
hopes  and  crushed  in  his  darling  ambition — prostrated  by  the 
failure  of  the  army  whose  invincibility  was  with  him  a  creed,  saw 
nothing  in  front  of  him  but  what,  to  his  proud  heart,  seemed  ruin 
and  despair.  Broken  hi  spirit,  the  great  Tsar  laid  himself  down  to 
die.  That  was  the  tragedy  of  the  little  camp  bed. 


Here  is  a  wrinkle  for  the  Criminal  Investigation  Department. 
Towards  the  end  of  December,  1863  (Old  Style)  St.  Petersburg  was 
stirred  by  a  crime  which  touched  all  Russians  to  the  quick. 
Murder  and  sacrilege.  On  the  opposite  bank  of  the  Neva  stands 
the  little  wooden  house  of  Peter  the  Great,  together  with  a  boat 
built  by  his  hands.  To  this  is  attached  a  small  church  of  great 
sanctity  ;  indeed,  even  to  me,  a  stranger  belonging  to  another 
school  of  faith,  this  humble  shrine,  for  some  mysterious  reason 
felt  but  not  explained,  even  to  myseli,  seemed  more  an  object  of 
reverence  than  many  a  gorgeous  place  of  worship  decked  out  in 
all  the  lavish  trappings  furnished  by  the  orthodox,  who  never 
grudge  the  spending  of  their  treasure  for  the  adornment  of  their 
temples.  To  this  sacred  place  the  pious  have  been  in  the  habit 
of  bringing  votive  offerings,  reliquaries  and  jewels  of  great  price. 

When  on  the  twenty-first  of  the  month  (Old  Style)  the  church 
was  broken  into  and  robbed,  and  the  two  guardians  murdered, 
their  skulls  being  battered  in,  as  it  was  thought,  with  iron  or  leaden 
weights,  great  indeed  was  the  consternation  amongst  the  faithful 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest.  The  Tsar  himself  went  to  visit 
the  scene  of  the  tragedy.  To  the  ntujik,  intensely  religious,  not  to 
say  superstitious,  the  effect  was  stupefying.  An  ordinary  murder 
VOL.  r  17 


Memories 


leaves  him  calm  and  cold,  and  the  death  of  the  watchers  was  an 
affair  of  small  account.  What  mattered  a  mujih  or  two  more  or 
less  ?  The  violation  of  the  holy  shrine  was  quite  another  matter. 

After  long  and  painstaking  inquiries,  circumstantial  evidence 
showed  that  one  Gudzevitch,  a  soldier,  was  the  murderer.  As  to 
that  there  could  be  no  doubt.  But  the  man's  confession  was 
necessary,  and  this  could  not  be  obtained.  Not  all  the  cunning 
of  judge  and  lawyers,  not  all  the  pious  exhortations  of  the  arch- 
priest,  Polissador,  of  the  Church  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  who 
visited  him  several  times  a  day,  were  able  to  extract  a  word  from 
him.  He  remained  as  hard  as  a  flint,  stiffly  protesting  his  inno- 
cence in  the  face  of  every  proof.  Of  repentance  not  a  hint.  As 
the  Journal  de  St.  Peter  sbourg  put  it,  "  There  was  nothing  for  it 
but  to  proceed  to  extreme  measures."  There  was  at  that  time 
in  prison  another  soldier  named  Baouschkin,  belonging  to  the 
Kharkov  regiment.  It  was  determined  to  shut  this  man  up  in  the 
same  cell  with  Gudzevitch  in  the  hope  that  he  might  be  able  to 
worm  something  out  of  him. 

On  the  seventh  (nineteenth)  of  January,  Baouschkin  made  his 
report.  He  declared  that  Gudzevitch  asked  him  for  what  crime  he 
was  in  prison,  and  that,  on  hearing  that  it  was  for  murder,  theft 
and  arson  Gudzevitch  tried  to  induce  him  to  confess  that  he  was 
the  murderer  of  the  two  watchmen  at  Peter  the  Great's  house  ; 
he  argued  that,  as  he  must  suffer,  it  would  put.  him  in  no  worse 
position,  and  what  a  kindness  he  would  be  doing  ! 
'  By  degrees,  playing  upon  the  wretched  man's  hopes  and  fears, 
Baouschkin  obtained  all  the  details  —  the  instrument  with  which 
the  murder  was  committed  (an  axe,  with  the  hammer  end  of  which 
the  men  had  been  brained,  and  not  a  heavy  weight,  as  had  been 
supposed)  was  found,  together  with  a  box  in  which  the  stolen 
offertory  had  been  contained,  and  the  prisoner  was  condemned  to 
death.  Penitent  he  was  at  the  last,  moved  thereto  by  the  con- 
templation of  the  photograph  of  one  of  the  murdered  men  which 
had  been  placed  in  his  cell,  that  the  sight  might  haunt  him  into 
confession  and  repentance.  For  civilians  the  death  penalty  was 
abolished,  except  for  high  treason  ;  for  them  flogging  with  rods 
and  Siberia  were  the  punishment  ;  but  Gudzevitch,  being  a  soldier, 


Through  the  Winter  259 

must  die.  The  night  of  his  execution  I  met  the  officer  who 
commanded  the  parade.  He  was  shot,  twelve  conical  bullets 
riddling  his  body,  and  even  so  he  was  not  dead  ;  it  was  a  gruesome 
sight  when  the  poor  wretch  fell  and  lifted  himself  slowly  up — six 
more  bullets  and  he  was  dead. 

The  criminal  procedure,  if  successful,  struck  me  as  peculiar. 
It  had  something  of  the  flavour  of  the  Herodotean  stories  of  the 
methods  of  ancient  kings. 

I  do  not  believe  that  there  was  more  crime  in  St.  Petersburg 
fifty  years  ago  than  in  any  other  city.  The  mujik  is  good-natured, 
easy-going,  rather  dull  and  childish,  and  his  tastes  are  distinctly 
bacchanalian.  But  one  could  not  fancy  so  simple  a  creature 
vicious  or  criminal.  In  old  days  there  were  frequently,  if  reports 
be  true,  murders  of  a  peculiarly  ugly  kind.  In  the  dark  whiter 
nights  robbers  used  to  infest  the  frozen  river,  waylaying  the  unwary 
footpad  who  ventured  across  alone.  A  stunning  blow  on  the  head 
was  quickly  given,  and  a  hole  in  the  ice  was  ready  to  receive  a 
victim,  stripped  of  his  clothes  and  valuables  ;  the  body  would 
be  carried  down  the  river  under  the  ice,  past  Kronstadt,  into  the 
Baltic,  and  all  trace  of  the  crime  would  be  lost  for  ever. 

In  my  time  the  river  was  well  policed,  and  the  brilliant  lighting 
not  only  shed  over  the  city  the  joy  of  beauty,  but  gave  safety  in 
place  of  danger.  But  stories  used  still  to  be  told  of  a  certain  wicked 
old  watchman  (Budotchnik)  who,  posted  near  the  Blue  Bridge,  was 
supposed  to  have  sent  out  to  sea  in  this  way  upwards  of  thirty  of 
the  very  people  over  whose  lives  and  property  it  was  his  duty  to 
keep  guard.  Quis  custodiet  custodes  ! 

Since  man  has  fallen,  wickedness  there  must  be  in  all  nations. 
Satan  is  ubiquitous.  But  in  Russia  the  doctrines  of  the  Faith 
are  so  infused  into  the  blood  of  the  people  that  even  the  criminals 
are  religious — at  any  rate  so  far  as  the  outer  observances  are 
concerned.  It  is  said  that  a  Russian  thief  will  cross  himself  with 
one  hand  while  he  picks  your  pocket  with  the  other,  and  I  have 
no  doubt  that  even  that  murderous  old  Budotchnik  would  have 
sacrificed  his  own  life  rather  than  take  down  the  ikon,  the  sacred 
image  of  his  patron  saint,  from  its  place  of  honour  in  the  comer 
of  his  room. 

VOL.  i  17* 


Memories 


The  piety  of  the  people  is  very  real,  very  sincere.  Of  that  there 
can  be  no  doubt  ;  the  greatest  proof  lies  in  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice 
and  in  the  submission  to  privations  which  are  serious  and  often 
injurious  to  health.  Take  the  great  festivals  of  their  Church. 
Christmas  Day,  Easter  and  the  feast  of  the  Trinity  are  observed 
in  ail  Christian  lands,  but  the  fourth  holy  day,  the  day  of  the 
Annunciation  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  mostly 
passed  over  with  inattention.  Here  it  is  different.  So  sacred  is 
the  occasion  that  no  man  who  can  possibly  help  it  will  do  a  turn 
of  work,  indeed,  there  is  a  popular  saying  that  "  even  the  birds 
rest  from  building  their  nests  on  that  day."  The  very  isvostchik 
(cabman)  deserts  the  streets,  unless  it  be  for  bread's  sake  —  the 
children  must  be  fed,  coin  is  scarce  and  food  dear. 

Lent,  above  all,  is  a  sore  trial  to  these  poor  people,  but  they 
bear  it  cheerfully.  During  those  six  cruel  weeks  they  taste  nothing 
but  the  poor  and  sordid  food  which  is  all  that  the  Church  allows 
them  —  an  ugly  soup  made  up  of  dried  toad-stools,  collected  in 
summer  and  sold  by  the  string,  onions,  pickled  cucumbers,  coarse 
cabbage,  dry  radishes,  horse-radish  and  black  bread  ;  these  in- 
gredients are  mixed  up  with  an  evil-smelling  black  oil  made  from 
hemp.  The  untempting  mess  of  pottage  is  washed  down  by 
draughts  of  cheap  hvass,  a  poor  sort  of  beer  brewed  of  rye  and  a 
little  malt  —  a  drink  scarcely  less  nasty  then  the  food.  Upon  this 
scanty  diet  the  mujik  grows  thin,  but  he  tightens  his  belt  and 
goes  about  his  work,  kept  in  heart  by  visions  of  drunken  happiness 
as  soon  as  the  last  stroke  of  twelve  on  Easter  Eve  shall  have  rung 
the  knell  of  his  misery. 

During  one  whole  week  of  Lent  every  man  gives  himself  up 
entirely  to  his  devotions.  At  four  in  the  morning  he  goes  fasting 
to  his  church.  There  he  stays  without  bite  or  sup  until  noon,  when 
he  leaves,  and  breaks  his  long  fast  with  a  dish  of  the  revolting  food 
which  I  have  described.  At  four,  if  he  can  manage  it,  he  returns 
to  his  prayers,  which  last  till  six,  and  yet  not  satisfied,  he  must 
again  go  to  church  in  the  evening.  Whatever  may  be  the  motive 
power  of  all  this  devotion  and  abnegation  —  be  it  superstition  or 
be  it  religion  —  it  is  quite  impossible  not  to  respect  it,  for  it  is  as 
honest  as  truth  itself. 


Through  the  Winter  261 

His  religion,  his  country,  and  the  Tsar.  Those,  fifty  years 
ago,  were  the  three  sacred  objects  of  the  Russian's  worship,  and 
their  influence  was  so  interwoven  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  say 
which  should  be  placed  first.  In  no  people  could  the  feeling  of 
nationality  be  more  strongly  developed  ;  it  was  fed  by  a  feeling 
of  proprietorship  absolutely  unique.  Every  man,  however  humble 
his  position  in  the  world  might  be,  conceived  himself  as  having  a 
share  in  the  soil  equal  to  that  of  the  richest :  it  was  a  relic  of  the 
old  nomad  habits  of  the  Aryan  people,  who  wandered  over  Europe 
from  the  Pamirs  :  where  they  pitched  their  tent,  there  they  were 
free  to  dwell,  and  from  the  ground  which  they  tilled  theirs  was 
the  harvest. 

With  the  march  of  time  the  custom  had  long  since  faded  away, 
but  the  idea,  handed  down  by  the  remote  ancestors,  was  still  dimly 
alive  in  their  posterity,  and  it  was,  moreover,  a  flicker  which  the 
recent  emancipation  of  the  serfs  had  in  a  measure  rekindled.  The 
Russian  loves  his  country  as  something  peculiarly  his  own,  and 
he  loves  it,  moreover,  believing  it  to  be  the  home  of  God  and  of 
the  true  religion.  There  is  a  country  adage  which  says,  "  Our 
kingdom  is  invincible  for  God  is  in  the  midst  of  it."  It  must  not 
be  supposed  that  this  high  and  patriotic  feeling  is  confined  to  the 
peasants.  The  mighty  in  the  land  are  just  as  ardent  in  this 
passionate  devotion  to  the  fatherland  as  their  humbler  fellow- 
countrymen,  nor  are  they  less  strict  in  their  religious  observances. 

A  very  false  impression  is  created  abroad  by  a  certain  class  of 
Russians  who  haunt  the  boulevards  and  any  places  where  dissi- 
pation and  gambling  are  fast  and  furious — only  going  home  from 
time  to  time  to  collect  more  roubles  to  throw  into  the  swine-yards 
of  Europe.  These  are  the  men  who  cast  a  cloud  upon  their  country 
and  tarnish  the  good  name  of  their  fellows.  So  strong  is  the  inborn 
love  of  home  among  the  Slavonic  races  that  it  is  a  hard  matter  to 
persuade  the  mujik  to  emigrate  :  and  this  is  no  misfortune,  for  in 
Russia  the  population  has  never  been  adequate  to  the  vast  area 
of  its  territory  or  to  the  wants  of  the  country. 

Emigration,  as  we  understand  it — this  is  to  say,  forming  an 
establishment  and  founding  a  family  in  some  new  land  for  pros- 
perity's sake — must  be  an  idea  utterly  foreign  to  the  Russian 


262  Memories 

character,  which  has  been  moulded  for  centuries  in  the  idea  that 
only  one  home  is  possible. 

There  is  one  form  of  superstition  which  the  Russians  share  with 
the  ancient  Greeks.  They  delight  in  euphemisms  and  altogether 
object  to  the  use  of  unlucky  words.  Brutally  to  announce 
the  death  even  of  a  dog,  a  horse,  a  cow,  or  some  favourite 
animal  would  be  intolerable.  The  awkward  corner  is  turned  by 
a  pretty  phrase:  "  Sir,  your  dog  bids  you  live  a  long  life" — that 
is  the  orthodox  announcement. 

The  strangest  of  all  was  told  me  by  Prince  Vassiltchikoff,  an 
aide-de-camp  attached  to  the  War  Office.  He  had  been  sent  to 
Siberia  on  a  special  mission  to  report  upon  the  prisons  in  that 
land  of  woe.  Among  other  criminals  he  came  upon  a  handsome 
woman,  evidently  of  a  superior  class.  Struck  by  her  appearance, 
he  asked  her  why  she  was  there.  Without  hesitation  the  woman 
answered :  "  I  made  the  sign  of  the  cross  upon  my  father."  She 
had  murdered  him  !  It  appeared  that  her  father  had  illtreated 
her  child ;  mad  with  rage,  she  stabbed  him  hi  the  back.  She 
expressed  neither  sorrow  nor  repentance  for  what  she  had  done, 
and  to  all  further  questions  her  only  answer  was :  "  I  have  done 
wrong  and  I  suffer  for  it — the  rest  is  with  myself."  Could 
^Eschylus  himself  have  put  more  poignantly  tragic  words  into 
that  unhappy  daughter's  mouth  ?  What  a  saying  to  express 
parricide  !  "  I  made  the  sign  of  the  cross  upon  him." 

Duels  in  Russia  were  very  rare ;  all  the  more  did  they  create 
a  sensation  when  they  did  occur.  There  was  a  double  duel  which 
took  place  while  I  was  there  and  which  was  much  talked  about. 
A  young  Polish  officer  of  the  Grodno  Hussar  regiment  insulted 
two  Russian  officers.  I  never  heard  the  rights  of  the  story  or 
what  was  the  occasion  of  the  quarrel.  At  any  rate,  the  Pole  had 
to  fight  both  the  men  whom  he  had  affronted.  In  the  first  duel, 
possibly  from  nervous  excitement,  he  fired  before  the  seconds 
gave  the  signal  and  broke  his  adversary's  leg.  The  second  duel 
took  place  the  next  day,  and  this  time  it  was  a  la  barriere.  The 
Pole  immediately  on  the  signal  to  advance  being  given  fired  in 
the  air.  His  adversary  let  him  come  forward  to  the  extreme 
limit  allowed  by  the  agreement — five  paces — took  deliberate  aim 


Through  the  Winter  263 

and  shot  him  in  the  head;  he  died  a  few  hours  afterwards.  The 
officer  who  killed  him  was  a  rich  man  of  good  family,  but  none 
the  less  we  were  told  that  he  would  be  broken,  reduced  to  the 
ranks,  and  have  to  serve  as  a  common  soldier. 

Duelling  was  strictly  forbidden  both  by  military  and  civil  law. 
I  suppose  it  is  a  crime,  but  none  the  less  it  does  seem  to  me  that 
there  are  certain  cases  hi  which  it  is  a  safeguard  to  society  and 
more  than  permissible.  The  absurd  journalistic  duels  of  which 
we  hear  so  much  on  the  Continent  are  quite  another  matter. 

The  most  famous  duel  in  the  history  of  Russian  society  was 
that  in  which  the  great  poet  Puschkin  lost  his  life  in  the  winter 
of  1837.  The  story  is  a  curious  one. 

The  poet  had  a  very  beautiful  wife,  whom  he  married  at  Moscow 
in  1831.  He  was  very  much  in  love  with  her,  and  proportionately 
jealous,  especially  of  the  attentions  paid  to  her  by  an  attache 
of  the  Dutch  Legation,  a  certain  Monsieur  Dantes-Heckeren. 
Puschkin,  who  suspected  his  wife  of  being  too  much  inclined  to 
listen  to  this  gentleman's  blandishments,  was  infuriated.  Coming 
home  one  evening,  he  found  the  Dutchman  as  usual  sitting  at  tea 
with  his  wife ;  as  it  was  the  fashion  to  pay  visits  after  dinner,  there 
was  nothing  to  take  umbrage  at  hi  that.  Puschkin  made  no 
remark,  but  presently  he  turned  out  the  lamp,  throwing  the  room 
into  darkness,  and  going  to  the  fireplace,  smeared  some  soot  on 
his  mouth,  kissed  his  wife  and  went  out  of  the  room  to  get  a  fresh 
light.  When  he  came  back  he  found,  as  he  expected,  not  only 
his  wife's  lips  but  the  Dutchman's  black  with  soot.  Denial  and 
excuses  were  out  of  the  question,  and  Puschkin  kicked  the  man 
out  of  the  house.  The  next  day  they  fought,  and  the  poet  received 
a  mortal  wound.  He  only  lived  three  days  and  died  in  torture  ; 
he  was  but  thirty-eight  years  old.  The  man  who  killed  him 
married  his  widow.  So  much  for  the  inexorable  justice  of  the 
ordeal  by  battle. 

Puschkin  was  the  glory  of  Russian  poetry.  His  was  a  chequered 
career,  for  he  lived  in  a  chronic  state  of  being  banished  for  treason 
and  forgiven ;  he  was  the  chartered  libertine  of  politics,  and  a 
very  signal  example  of  the  generosity  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas. 
Over  and  over  again  his  violent  principles,  or  no  principles,  brought 


264  Memories 

him  into  disgrace ;  over  and  over  again  the  Tsar  forgave.  The 
Tsar,  meeting  him  one  foggy  day  hi  the  street,  recognized  him, 
and  bade  him,  since  he  was  a  poet,  to  improvise  something.  With 
consummate  audacity,  pointing  to  a  street  lamp,  he  at  once  spouted 

this  quatrain  : 

In  the  place  of  that  lamp 

Which  shines  in  the  gloomy  weather, 

I'd  hang  the  head  of  the  Tsar 

t  And  shout  out  Freedom  !  * 

In  spite  of  his  many  escapades  he  died  in  high  favour  with  the 
generous  Tsar,  who  made  him  Gentilhomme  de  la  Chambre  and  gave 
him  twenty  thousand  roubles  towards  publishing  his  last  poem. 
And  yet  there  were  people  who  spoke  of  Nicholas  as  a  cruel,  un- 
forgiving tyrant !  I  think  that  if  I  were  a  Russian,  I  should  be 
at  least  as  proud  of  the  memory  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas  as  of 
that  of  the  poet  Puschkin.  He  was  indeed  a  great  "  gentleman." 

The  emancipation  of  the  serfs  in  the  month  of  March,  1861,  was 
the  greatest  act  of  Alexander  the  Second's  life.  Whether  looked 
at  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  intrinsic  difficulties,  or  from  that 
of  its  consequences,  it  was  one  of  the  broadest  social  reforms  ever 
undertaken  by  any  monarch.  There  are  perhaps  few  people  hi 
this  country  who  understand  what  serfdom  really  meant ;  it  is 
usually  thought  that  the  serfs  were  all  of  them  poor,  ignorant 
peasants,  leading  squalid  and  hungry  lives  hi  the  tillage  of  the 
lands  of  their  owners.  In  the  vast  majority  of  cases  this,  no 
doubt,  was  so,  but  there  were  many  exceptions.  There  were  not 
a  few  of  these  men  who  possessed  better  natural  gifts  than  the 
rest,  had  more  or  less  contrived  to  educate  themselves,  and  had 
been  allowed  to  push  their  fortunes  hi  various  capacities  as  trades- 
men, domestic  servants,  etc.,  hi  the  great  towns.  One  man  of 
whom  I  was  told  on  undoubted  authority  throve  hi  his  trade 
and  became  the  fashionable  hatter  of  Moscow.  None  the  less, 
he  was  a  slave — the  property,  the  chattel,  of  a  certain  landlord,  to 
whom  a  portion  of  his  profits  was  yearly  due. 

*  la  bui  v'  miesto  phonaria 
Katorii  svietiet  v'  niepagodu 
Vieshal  bui  golovu  Tsaria 
I  provosglocil  svobodu." 


-_„. . . „ 

THE    EMPEROR    ALEXANDER    II..     1864. 
l-'roin  a  tkvtcli  by  Zichy. 


Through  the  Winter  265 

That  such  a  state  of  things  should  endure  through  more  than 
the  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  at  this  tune  unthinkable, 
yet  it  was  so  ;  and  perhaps  it  would  be  necessary  to  have  lived 
in  Russia  in  the  pre-liberation  days  in  order  to  realize  how  little 
public  opinion  was  shocked  thereby.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that, 
in  spite  of  the  strong  opposition  which  inevitably  meets  a  great 
social  upheaval,  the  Tsar  was  loyally  helped  by  the  more  enlightened 
members  of  the  aristocracy,  men  who  were  ready  to  do  what  they 
knew  to  be  right,  even  though  their  properties  were  seriously 
affected.  He  was,  moreover,  ably  seconded  by  his  Minister  of 
the  Interior,  Monsieur  Valouieff,  to  whom  must  be  given  the  credit 
of  initiating  all  those  measures  of  reform  which  were  rendered 
necessary  by  the  great  change — especially  the  creation  of  the 
Semstvos,  elective  bodies  something  like  our  county  councils,  to 
which  was  delegated  the  management  of  local  affairs.  The  nobles 
who  so  generously  accepted  what  was  a  great  sacrifice  were 
rewarded  by  the  Tsar  with  a  special  commemorative  decoration. 

On  the  anniversary  of  his  accession  to  the  throne,  February  18 
(March  2),  1864,  the  Emperor  published  an  ukase  extending  the 
liberation  of  the  serfs  to  Poland.  The  measure  provided  for  the 
handing  over  to  the  peasants  in  fee  simple  the  land  which  up  to 
that  time  they  had  cultivated  on  behalf  of  their  lords.  The 
scheme  was  in  all  respects  save  one  the  same  as  that  which  had 
been  propounded  by  the  so-called  National  Government ;  but 
whereas  the  latter  had  proposed  to  indemnify  the  proprietor  from 
the  general  revenues  of  the  country,  the  Russian  Government 
undertook  to  buy  the  land  at  sixteen  and  two-thirds  years'  pur- 
chase, and  to  recoup  themselves  by  special  taxation.  The  land- 
lord was  to  retain  his  own  domain,  always  the  most  fertile  part 
of  the  property — corresponding  to  a  sort  of  home  farm  on  a  gigantic 
scale,  with  its  houses,  farm  buildings,  etc.  The  Polish  landlords 
were,  of  course,  furious  and  declared  that  they  would  all  be  ruined. 
There  were  iv  rough  numbers  some  five  thousand  principal  owners, 
and  there  were  hi  addition  thirty  Russian  majorats  (properties 
entailed  upon  the  eldest  son)  which  were  equally  concerned  in 
the  change.  One  of  the  representatives  of  the  latter  properties 
said  to  me  cynically :  "  Nous  sommes  tous  mines.  Eh  bien  i 


266  Memories 

tant  mieux,  puisqu'il  y  aura  plus  de  cinq  mille  de  ces  sacres  Polonais 
qui  le  seront  bien  plus  que  nous."  These  Russian  majorats  were 
the  rewards  of  services  rendered  against  the  Poles. 

One  main  principle  which  the  Government  had  hi  view  was 
to  reward  those  peasants  who  did  not  join  in  the  insurrection, 
at  the  expense  of  the  landlords  and  the  middle-class  who  were 
its  heart  and  soul.  The  Polish  peasant  looked  upon  the  landlord 
as  his  natural  enemy — a  tyrant  of  whom  to  be  rid  would  be  Para- 
dise. He  therefore  was  entirely  pro-Russian,  though  he  might 
not  dare  to  declare  himself.  Keeping  in  mind  this  spirit,  there 
were  not  lacking  pessimists  who  declared  that  so  soon  as  the  ex- 
serf  should  find  himself  his  own  master,  with  nothing  over  him 
but  the  Russian  Government,  his  views  would  be  altered.  With 
rebellion  born  hi  his  blood,  he  would  join  the  other  camp,  and  be 
as  bitter  hi  enmity  as  he  had  been  warm  in  a  friendship  which 
for  him  spelt  hope.  In  time  the  benefactor  would  degenerate  into 
the  tax-gatherer,  and  the  metamorphosis  would  be  hateful  and 
of  ill  omen. 

The  measure  was  framed  upon  a  report  by  General  Miliutin, 
who  was  sent  on  a  special  mission  to  gather  information  upon  the 
spot ;  and  the  pamphleteering  defence  of  the  plan  was  entrusted 
to  that  very  able  penman  and  special  pleader,  M.  Katakazy,  to 
whom  I  have  already  alluded  as  the  writer  of  Prince  Gortchakoff' s 
three  answers  to  Lord  Russell.  His  work  on  this  occasion  was 
a  masterpiece  both  in  what  it  said  and  in  what  it  held  back. 

However  people  might  carp  and  cavil  at  a  piece  of  legislation 
which  was  distasteful  to  them,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there 
was  joy  in  the  poor  hovels  of  Poland.  Still  there  were  many  shoals 
ahead  needing  a  skilful  pilot.  It  was  easy  enough  to  decree  the 
broad  principle  of  the  ukase,  but  the  working  out  of  the  details 
was  quite  another  matter.  Neither  the  Emperor  nor  his  ministers 
had  the  power  of  creating  light  out  of  darkness.  There  were  many 
difficulties  to  be  mastered,  many  riddles  to  be  solved,  taxing  the 
acutest  ingenuity  of  the  Russian  statesmen.  Three  of  the  chief 
of  the  puzzles  were  the  right  of  succession,  the  power  of  the  peasant 
to  sell  his  land,  and  the  eternal  labour  question. 

As  regarded  the  right  of  succession,  the  Government  professed 


Through  the  Winter  267 

to  attach  great  importance  to  the  principle  of  large  peasant  hold- 
ings, but  inasmuch  as  Poland  was  under  the  law  of  the  Code 
Napoleon,  it  was  obvious  that  at  the  death  of  a  man  with  a  family 
his  property  must  be  divided,  and  by  degrees  the  holdings  must 
become  infinitesimally  small.  Crux  No.  2. — If  the  peasant  were 
allowed  to  sell  or  mortgage  his  land,  the  Jew  usurer  would  soon 
be  the  owner  of  half  Poland.  Crux  No.  3. — Where  was  labour  to 
be  found  for  the  land  left  in  the  hands  of  the  proprietors — as  I 
have  said  before,  the  richest  portion  of  the  cultivated  area  ?  The 
freed  peasant  would  have  his  hands  full  with  the  management 
of  his  own  holding,  and  the  class  who  formerly  cultivated  no  land 
on  their  own  account,  and  therefore  did  not  come  under  the  scope 
of  the  new  law,  would  not  suffice  to  till  the  domains  of  the  nobles. 
Each  of  these  three  puzzles  itself  bristled  with  minor  perplexities 
and  embarrassments  enough  to  break  the  heads  of  General 
Miliutin  and  his  crew  of  experts. 

A  compensation  at  the  rate  of  sixteen  and  two-thirds  years' 
purchase  may  seem  to  us  very  inadequate.  But  the  conditions  of 
land  in  Poland  were  not  what  they  are  in  France  or  in  England.  It 
is  needful  to  remember  the  vast  tracts  of  land  lying  far  away  from 
all  communication,  the  scarcity  of  labour,  the  difficulty  of  trans- 
port, the  expense  of  exporting  produce  and  importing  agricultural 
implements  and  other  necessaries,  and  then  it  will  be  plain  that 
the  value  of  land  in  Russia  and  in  Poland  did  not  stand  hi  the 
same  relation  to  money  as  it  did  hi  England,  France  or  Belgium, 
I  feel  sure  that,  having  regard  to  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case, 
the  ukase  was  an  honest  attempt  to  benefit  the  peasant  on  the 
one  hand,  and  fairly  to  recoup  the  landed  proprietor  on  the  other. 

On  the  1 7th  of  April  a  deputation  of  seventy-three  Polish  peasants 
from  the  government  of  Warsaw  and  Radom  arrived  in  St. 
Petersburg  to  convey  to  the  Emperor  the  thanks  of  the  agricul- 
tural labourers  hi  Poland  for  the  benefits  conferred  upon  them 
by  the  decree.  The  authorities  made  a  great  fuss  with  them; 
they  were  lionized  over  the  town  in  great  cross-seated  brakes,  and 
it  was  good  to  see  their  happiness  and  their  unconcealed  wonder 
at  all  the  great  sights  of  St.  Petersburg.  Most  of  them  had  pro- 
bably never  been  outside  the  circuit  of  their  own  lonely  villages. 


268  Memories 

They  created  a  great  sensation,  some  dressed  in  Polish  costume, 
but  all  wearing  the  square  national  cap — wild-looking  fellows 
enough,  but  obviously  quite  tame  and  trustworthy,  for  only  ten 
policemen  were  told  off  to  look  after  them.  The  crowning  point 
of  their  joy  was  reached  when  the  Tsar  received  them  in  person, 
and  gave  them  a  dinner  at  the  Winter  Palace.  What  fairy  tales 
they  would  have  to  tell  when  they  should  arrive  at  their  farms  and 
cottages  hidden  among  the  desolate  swamps  and  forests  of  Poland  ! 

The  outing  lasted  for  several  days,  and  on  the  23rd  I  went  with 
Lord  Napier  to  the  banquet  given  to  the  deputation  and  to  an 
equal  number  of  specially  selected  Russian  peasants  from  the  dis- 
trict round  the  capital,  who  were  told  off  to  entertain  the  strangers 
and  do  the  honours  of  the  city.  As  they  did  not  understand  one 
word  of  one  another's  language,  their  comradeship  must  have 
lacked  gaiety.  But  the  meeting  symbolized  the  union  of  the 
two  nations,  and  in  spite  of  the  dearth  of  conversation,  it  made  a 
good  appearance  of  fraternization,  and  that  was  held  to  be  much. 
The  banquet  took  place  in  the  Gorodskaia  Duma,  a  sort  of  ex- 
traordinarily shabby  town  hall,  something  like  a  second-class 
waiting-room  at  a  railway  station.  However,  the  frame  was  a 
secondary  consideration  so  long  as  the  picture  was  all  right. 

Presently  there  was  a  great  stir  outside  and  we  were  told  that 
the  Emperor  was  arriving.  On  hearing  this  joyful  news,  an  en- 
thusiastic Pole  near  me  spat  freely  into  his  hands  and  proceeded 
to  plaster  down  his  hair  and  wash  his  face  like  a  cat.  Un  petit  bout 
de  toilette  !  as  Wigan,  the  great  actor,  used  to  say  in  The  First  Ni,:ht. 

The  loyal  joy  with  which  the  Emperor  was  received  was  very 
touching.  As  usual,  he  played  his  part  most  nobly,  was  very 
gracious  and  kingly,  and  as  he  walked  round  the  hall  had  a  smile 
and  a  kind  word  for  almost  every  one  of  the  men.  When  he  had 
finished  his  round  one  of  the  men  shouted  in  a  stentorian  voice  : 
"  Let  us  drink  to  the  Tsar."  This  raised  a  thunder  of  applause 
and  cheering,  after  which  the  Emperor,  standing  in  the  midst  of  the 
hall,  was  served  with  a  glass  of  wine  and  said  :  "  I  drink  to  the 
indissoluble  union  of  the  two  nations  !  "  This,  of  course,  was 
received  with  yells  of  joy,  the  men  cheering  like  Eton  boys  on  the 
Fourth  of  June. 


Through  the  Winter  269 

* 

The  Grand  Duke  Constantine  was  with  the  Tsar,  and  as  he  had 
recently  returned  from  governing  Poland,  he  was  recognized  and 
received  a  special  ovation,  upon  which  the  Emperor  drank  to  him 
and  kissed  him — he  was  his  favourite  brother,  to  whom  he  was 
deeply  attached ;  the  Grand  Duke  kissed  him  in  return  on  the 
left  breast — a  pretty  token  of  love  and  duty. 

The  Poles  looked  very  picturesque  and  quaint  hi  their  national 
costume,  but  it  was  impossible  not  to  be  struck  by  the  far  finer 
appearance  of  their  Russian  compeers  (of  course  both  parties  were 
made  up  more  or  less  of  picked  men).  Then  the  Russians  wore 
beards,  which  so  well  befit  the  kaftan  and  northern  dress,  besides 
covering  a  multitude  of  sins  against  beauty,  while  the  Poles  were 
shaven,  showing  all  their  imperfections  of  feature.  I  was  well 
pleased  to  have  the  opportunity  of  seeing  this  historic  banquet. 
Lord  Napier  was  the  only  foreigner  invited,  and  I  went  in  attend- 
ance upon  him. 

The  Emperor's  staff  were  always  worthy  of  his  own  imposing 
appearance.  The  Imperial  family  who  surrounded  him  were  all 
men  of  great  stature  and  good  carriage,  while  old  Prince  Suvoroff, 
Monsieur  Valouieff,  the  Minister  of  the  Interior,  and  many  of  the 
general  officers  and  aides-de-camp  were  fine,  strikingly  tall  men. 
It  was  a  goodly  company  of  Anakim.  Monsieur  Valouieff,  although 
in  civilian  dress,  was  so  handsome  a  figure  as  to  be  always 
conspicuous,  even  among  the  brilliantly  accoutred  warriors ; 
perhaps,  like  Lord  Castlereagh  at  Vienna,  he  was  only  the  more 
distinguished  ! 

It  seemed  a  pity  that  in  so  beautiful  a  city,  where  there  is  a 
wealth  of  magnificent  buildings,  there  should  have  been  no  worthier 
place  for  a  really  memorable  feast  than  this  mean  semblance  of  a 
town  hall,  which  certainly  did  not  beseem  the  occasion. 

Well  may  the  Russians  call  the  sennight  that  goes  before  Lent 
"  the  mad  week."  Another  name  for  it  is  maslianitza,  or  "  butter 
week,"  but  I  prefer  the  first,  for  indeed  Bedlam  is  let  loose  and 
plays  the  wildest  pranks,  and  no  one  can  say  that  the  mujik  takes 
his  pleasures  sadly.  At  the  beginning  of  the  week  my  coachman 
came  to  me  and,  according  to  treaty,  asked  leave  to  go  and  get 


270  Memories 

drunk.  These  coachmen  are  really  great  characters.  They  are 
out  in  all  weather,  and  never  grumble  at  being  kept  waiting  for 
nours  when  the  mercury  in  the  thermometer  has  almost  fallen 
out  of  sight.  They  show  no  signs  of  boredom  or  weariness.  My 
man,  Mikhail,  for  want  of  better  company  would  conjure  away 
the  tedium  by  talking  out  loud  to  himself.  I  sometimes  watched 
him  out  of  my  window  enjoying  his  own  conversation,  shaking 
his  head,  cracking  jokes  and  laughing  his  heart  out  at  them,  or 
telling  himself  some  tear-compelling  tale  of  woe.  He  was  the 
ugliest  man  in  the  town  and  as  true  as  steel — on  one  condition : 
every  now  and  then  he  must  get  drunk ;  so  we  entered  into  a  solemn 
compact  which  he  never  broke. 

He  would  come  to  me  from  time  to  time,  perhaps  twice  in  a 
month,  and  say  that  it  was  long  since  he  had  been  happy — would 
my  Excellency  be  pleased  to  name  a  day  when  it  would  be  con- 
venient for  him  to  be  absent — anglice,  "  get  drunk."  I  would  look 
at  my  engagement  book  and  see  what  I  had  to  do.  Monday,  the 
French  Embassy — Tuesday,  a  big  ball — Wednesday,  a  ceremony 
at  Court — should  we  say  Thursday  ?  "  Slava  Bogu  "  ("  Glory  be 
to  God"),  he  would  answer,  "  it  shall  be  Thursday  with  your  Excel- 
lency's forgiveness."  On  the  Friday  he  would  reappear  with  clock- 
work punctuality — a  little  pale  and  rather  heavy-lidded,  but  per- 
fectly cheerful.  Without  such  an  arrangement  one  was  never 
safe.  I  had  to  dismiss  four  coachmen  before  I  found  this  one,  who 
was  a  treasure,  and  never  played  me  false.  The  bargain  was  part 
of  a  system  before  which  all  foreigners,  at  any  rate,  had  to  bow 
lest  worse  befall  them. 

To  see  the  saturnalia  of  the  week  at  their  maddest  one  had 
to  go  to  the  great  Admiralty  Place,  the  huge  area  of  which  was 
entirely  taken  up  by  booths,  circuses,  giants  and  dwarfs,  cheap 
pantomimes  and  ballets,  boneless  contortionists  and  the  inevit- 
able Hercules  of  the  Fair,  with  his  weights  and  clubs.  There  was 
one  very  droll  and  quite  national  exhibition  consisting  of  a  re- 
presentation of  the  creation  of  the  world  from  chaos  to  the  fall 
of  man,  in  which  the  marionettes,  worked  by  springs  into  all  sorts 
of  comicalities,  were  the  actors.  Of  course  there  were  ice-moun- 
tains for  tobogganing,  but  by  far  the  most  popular  entertainments 


Through  the  Winter  271 

were  the  merry-go-rounds,  which  swarmed,  rilling  every  vacant 
place  and  making  the  days  and  nights  hideous  with  the  braying 
of  discordant  brass  bands.  But  the  noise  and  the  riot  were  a  pure 
delight  to  man,  woman  and  child,  whose  shrieks  of  joy  added 
pepper  and  salt  to  the  great  charivari.  All  the  riff-raff  of  the 
town  was  gathered  together,  those  happy  ones  who  had  a  few 
kopecks  rushing  eagerly  to  spend  them ;  the  unfortunates  who 
could  not  muster  a  copper  quite  as  keen,  some  standing  for  hours 
knee- deep  in  the  melting  snow — for  it  was  a  dirty  thaw — peering 
into  the  chinks  between  the  boards  of  the  theatres  to  try  and  get 
a  peep  at  the  glories  within  ;  others  encouraging  the  patrons  of 
the  ice-mountains  and  wooden  horses  with  approving  shouts  and 
wild  applause.  Making  their  way  slowly,  tortuously  and  with 
much  splashing  of  icy  slush  through  the  seething  crowd,  were 
carriages  full  of  middle-class  folk  who  had  come  to  see  "  all  the 
fun  of  the  fair,"  while  numbers  of  policemen,  mounted  and  on 
foot,  bawling  and  swearing  at  nothing,  and  for  nothing,  added 
to  the  din  of  the  inferno. 

Here  was  indeed  King  Carnival  supreme  in  state.  But  all 
this  was  but  the  prelude ;  the  crowning  glory  of  the  festival  was 
yet  to  come.  For  what  is  joy  without  vodka,  and  what  is  vodka 
unless  it  be  drunk  in  sufficient  quantities  to  drown  memory  and 
consciousness  ?  The  mujik  would  probably  endorse  the  five 
classical  reasons  for  drinking — i.  The  advent  of  a  friend.  2.  You 
are  thirsty.  3.  You  may  be  thirsty  some  time  hence.  4.  The 
good  quality  of  the  liquor.  5.  Any  other  reason  ! 

I  am  reminded  as  I  write  these  lines  that  in  a  few  days  the  mad 
week  of  1915  will  take  place,  and  there  will  be  no  vodka  !  What 
will  happen  ?  What  will  my  poor  Mikhail  do  if  he  be  yet  alive  ? 

And  we  !  How  were  we  spending  the  mad  week,  while  the 
proletariat  were  playing  high  jinks  on  the  Admiralty  Place  ?  The 
great  folk  were  in  what  Shakespeare  calls  "  holiday  humour,"  no 
less  than  the  small,  and  they  too  were  bent  on  making  the  most 
of  the  last  merriment  that  the  Church  would  allow  till  the  long 
spell  of  Lenten  sadness  should  be  past ;  and  this  they  achieved 
by  turning  day  into  night.  By  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  we 
had  to  array  ourselves  in  evening  dress  to  go  and  eat  blinni  at  one 


272  Memories 

or  another  of  our  kind  friends'  hospitable  houses.  Blinni  are  a 
sort  of  scone,  a  cross  between  a  pancake  and  a  crumpet,  eaten  with 
fresh  butter  and  caviare,  a  very  tempting  form  of  food.  After 
feasting  upon  blinni  comes  dancing,  generally  a  regular  ball,  with 
cotillon  and  mazurka  complete.  Then  dressing  for  dinner,  two 
or  three  parties  and  at  least  one  ball.  All  business  at  a  standstill, 
nothing  but  pleasure,  more  pleasure  and  yet  again  pleasure.  By 
the  end  of  the  week  the  world  seemed  a  little  limp,  and  I  think  we 
all  realized  that  "  surfeit  is  the  father  of  much  fast."* 

It  was  not  very  often  that  the  men  of  letters  made  an  appearance 
in  the  society  of  St.  Petersburg.  I  was  all  the  more  interested 
when  one  evening  Lord  Napier  invited  a  few  of  them  to  dinner  at 
the  Embassy ;  amongst  them  was  Turgenieff ,  the  famous  author — 
a  tall,  strikingly  handsome  man  with  grey  hair — altogether  a 
commanding  figure.  I  was  much  disappointed  at  not  being  able 
to  hear  him  talk,  but  I  was  placed  a  long  way  from  him,  and  as 
he  left  immediately  after  dinner,  I  had  no  opportunity  of  speaking 
with  him.  I  sat  next  to  M.  Novikoff,  an  official  of  high  position, 
who  was  very  communicative. 

The  conversation  round  us  turned  upon  the  colonizing  policy  of 

the  old  Romans,  with  whom  M.  Novikoff  found  great  fault,  saying 

how  foolish  it  was  of  them  to  punish  as  a  crime  any  attempt  on 

the  part  of  the  conquered   tribes  to  regain   their  liberty.     Such 

attempts,  according  to  him,  might  be  treated  as  acts  of  war,  but 

not  visited  with  the  severity  merited  by  treason.     I  could  not 

help  hinting  to  M.  Novikoff  that  the  policy  which  he  so   strongly 

condemned  in  the  Romans  was  something  uncommonly  like,  or 

even   identical    with,   that    of    Russia  in   Poland.      M.   Novikoff 

became  very  much  confused  and  changed  the  subject  to  that  of 

the  liberation  of  the  serfs.     In  this  connection  he  talked  of  M. 

Valouieff,  the  responsible  minister,  in  terms  of  contempt,  which 

quite  took  me  by  surprise.     I  ventured  to  ask  whether  M.  Valouieff 

was  not  held  to  be  a  man  of    great    talent.      His    answer   was 

characteristic  :    "  Mon  Dieu,  oui !   puisque  1'Empereur  1'a  voulu." 

The  chronicling  of  the  small  beer  of  parties  is  but  poor  stuff; 

and  yet  there  was  one  party  which  to  me  a  meant  very  strong  ale 

*  Measure  for  Measure^ 


Through  the  Winter  273 

indeed,  and  so  I  am  fain  to  write  of  it  even  after  fifty  years.  One 
evening  M.  Jean  Tolstoy  sent  out  about  thirty  invitations  for  a 
very  small  gathering,  myself  among  the  number,  to  meet  the  Tsar, 
and  listen  to  music.  As  the  Emperor  was  expected,  I  of  course 
retired  into  the  background,  deeming  that  he  would  only  wish  to 
speak  to  the  gros  bonnets ;  however,  when  M.  Tolstoy  led 
him  into  the  room  he  gave  a  look  round,  and  seeing  me,  to  the 
amazement,  not  to  say  petrifaction,  of  the  mighty,  he  came  striding 
up  to  me,  shook  hands  and  began  talking  in  Russian,  saying  that 
he  heard  that  I  was  learning  his  language.  I  bowed — and  he 
went  on  speaking. 

For  a  few  minutes  we  conversed  in  Russian,  and  then,  after  paying 
me  many  compliments,  to  my  relief  he  changed  to  French.  He 
asked  me  a  great  many  questions  in  connection  with  my  new 
study — did  I  not  find  it  very  difficult  ?  What  language  did  I  think 
it  most  resembled  ?  I  told  him  that  I  thought  there  was  similarity 
with  none  so  far  as  I  knew,  except  as  regarded  Aryan  roots,  but 
that  there  were  more  grammatical  analogies  with  Greek  than  with 
any  other  language  of  which  I  had  any  knowledge.  He  agreed, 
and  that  led  him  to  speak  of  Latin,  reminding  me  of  what  I  had 
said  to  him  at  my  presentation  about  the  public  orator's  speech 
at  Oxford,  at  whose  expense  he  once  more  laughed  heartily.  He 
spoke  for  some  little  time  about  life  at  the  University  and  the 
beauty  of  Oxford,  which  seemed  to  have  interested  him  greatly, 
and  after  a  very  pleasant  talk,  went  on  to  speak  to  some  of  the 
other  guests.  Any  mark  of  the  Emperor's  condescension  was  sure 
to  make  a  great  sensation  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  for  twenty-four 
hours  I  was  quite  a  hero.  "  On  dit  que  1'Empereur  a  cause  avec 
vous  en  Russe — vous  devez  en  etre  joliment  fier  !  "  That  was  the 
gist  of  what  everyone  whom  I  met  the  next  day  said  to  me.  I 
should  have  been  even  less  or  more  than  human  if  I  had  not  felt 
flattered  and  proud. 

One  evening  Lady  Napier,  who  had  rather  broken  down  after 
the  trials  of  the  winter  and  was  soon  go'ng  to  Germany  for  a  rest 
and  change,  invited  a  few  of  the  diplomats  and  other  friends  to  a 
small  farewell  rout.  Belloli,  the  painter,  had  just  sent  home  a 
portrait  of  her  which  was  much  praised.  General  Cassius  Clay, 
VOL.  i  18 


274  Memories 

after  looking  at  it  thoughtfully  for  a  few  moments  and  then  at  her, 
«siid  :  "  I  guess,  Ma'am,  you  was  ruddier  when  that  was  done." 
Our  much-loved  ambassadress  certainly  was  looking  a  little  pale, 
and  tired  ;  but  the  good  General  probably  never  heard  the  old 
saying,  "  Toute  ve"rite  n'est  pas  bonne  a  dire."  The  Due  d'Osuna 
was  even  more  droll.  His  criticism  of  the  portrait  was :  "  Oui, 
c'est  zoli — c'est  meme  tres  bien  ;  mais  le  portrait  qu'il  a  fait  de 
moi  est  bien  plus  zoli  !  "  He  was  such  a  dear  little  man,  and  so 
kindly,  that  one  loved  him  just  as  he  was  with  his  weaknesses  and 
small  vanities,  which  hurt  nobody  ;  everyone  laughed,  and  nobody 
would  have  wished  him  otherwise 

At  Prince  Gortchakoff's  on  the  i8th  we  heard  the  news  of  the 
storming  and  capture  of  Diippel.  The  Prince's  remark  to  the 
Prussian  charge  d'affaires  on  getting  the  telegram  was,  "  J'espere 
enfin  que  c'est  la  paix  !  "  He  did  not  seem  to  think  that  the 
united  forces  of  Austria  and  Prussia  combined  had  much  to  boast 
of  in  having  beaten  unassisted  Denmark. 

Baron  Plessen,  the  Danish  Minister  at  St.  Petersburg,  was  a 
man  of  great  ability,  calm,  just  and  moderate  in  his  views.  One 
day  he  talked  to  me  for  a  long  time  about  the  war  and  the  causes 
which  led  to  it.  The  pith  of  his  remarks  is  worth  transcribing. 
"  If  France  and  England  had  been  able  to  agree  upon  this  affair 
the  war  might  have  been  prevented.  Russia  would  not  have  re- 
mained idle,  and  it  is  known  to  which  side  her  sympathies  lean. 
But  France  and  England  could  not  agree.  Meanwhile  England 
has  been  perpetually  making  apparent  advances  towards  action 
which  have  encouraged  the  Danes  to  prolong  their  obstinate  re- 
sistance. The  Danes  at  Copenhagen  see  matters  far  differently 
from  us,  who,  calmly  and  at  a  distance,  can  weigh  the  truth  of 
reports  and  judge  of  the  exact  bearing  of  protests  and  proposi- 
tions. At  Copenhagen  the  public  mind  is  so  inflamed  that  a  mere 
piece  of  newspaper  tittle-tattle  is  enough  to  convince  men  that 
England  and  France  will  actually  send  a  fleet  to  the  Baltic,  and 
this  it  is  which  caused  the  Danes  so  stubbornly  to  refuse  an  armis- 
tice which  would  have  saved  Diippel  and  spared  thousands  of 
lives.  But  with  the  best  intentions,  England  has  been  a  bad  friend 
to  Denmark,  for  she  has  raised  expectations  which  she  could  not 


Through  the  Winter  275 

realize.     Even  if  she  had  determined  upon  helping  Denmark,  she 
could  not  have  spared  an  adequate  land  force. 

"  As  for  Sweden,  she  promised  her  twenty  thousand  men  and  did 
not  send  them  ;  but  if  she  had  performed  her  promises,  the  Germans 
would  have  called  in  forty  thousand  troops,  and  she  would  have 
been  of  no  use.  Besides,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  dismember- 
ment of  Denmark  would  never  be  really  displeasing  to  Sweden, 
who  has  always  had  an  eye  upon  the  islands.  .  .  .  England  has 
throughout  treated  Germany  with  too  little  respect — she  thought 
that  she  had  only  to  speak  to  be  obeyed.  But  the  Germans  are 
strong,  and  too  proud  to  bear  dictation." 

Obviously  Baron  Plessen  disapproved  of  the  action  of  his 
Government  in  "  prolonging  their  obstinate  resistance "  at  the 
bidding  of  the  Copenhagen  mob,  whom  they  feared  ;  and  much  as 
I  admired  the  gallant  defence  of  Diippel,  I  could  not  help  sharing 
his  view.  But  the  important  point  for  us  in  what  he  said  lay  in 
his  remarks  about  the  fast-and-loose  policy  for  which  Lord  Russell 
was  responsible,  and  the  wavering  encouragement  without  which 
the  Danes  might  "  have  saved  Diippel  and  spared  thousands  of 
lives."  That  unstable  swinging  of  the  pendulum  was  a  blame 
which  no  special  pleading  could  remove.  And  what  it  cost !  And 
what  it  is  costing  now,  fifty-one  years  later  ! 

April  22nd  (loth). — Until  this  morning  there  was  no  sign  of 
the  breaking  up  of  the  Neva.  The  weather  for  some  days  had 
been  beautiful,  the  nights  lovely,  and  nowhere  can  the  entrancing 
splendour  of  moonlight  and  starlight  be  seen  to  greater  advantage 
than  in  this  city  of  gold  and  silver  spires.  How  poor  Whistler 
would  have  revelled  in  it  !  One  night,  in  addition  to  the  usual 
glories  of  the  darkness,  there  was  a  perfect  lunar  rainbow  bent  by 
the  fairies  over  the  Isaac's  Cathedral.  But  of  spring  no  faintest 
message.  All  at  once  my  servant  came  running  in  with  the  news 
that  the  river  was  moving.  I  hurried  out  to  the  embankment, 
and  found  all  the  world  and  his  wife  there,  watching  the  welcome 
wonder.  It  seemed  as  if  no  one  could  stay  at  home  and  miss  the 
great  sight  of  the  year. 

For  many  days  the  ice  of  the  solid  river  had  been  quite  black, 
but   now   it   had   turned   white   again,    and   was   slowly,    almost 
VOL.  i  18* 


276  Memories 

imperceptibly,  drifting  seaward.  Gradually  yawning  clefts  showed 
themselves  and  the  huge  mass  was  split  into  great  blocks.  Then 
the  rush  of  the  river  began  in  earnest ;  deserted  hayboats,  looking 
picturesquely  gloomy  against  the  dazzling  ice  and  sky,  came 
floating  down  the  stream,  to  be  dashed  into  a  thousand  splinters 
against  the  permanent  bridges.  A  few  unhappy  dogs  which  had 
been  unwarily  disporting  themselves  upon  the  river  while  it  was 
yet  unbroken  were  unable  to  make  their  escape,  and  were  carried 
away  to  the  Baltic  on  the  iceblocks,  howling  piteously.  It  was 
impossible  to  leave  the  crowded  quay  while  the  sight  lasted,  and 
at  night  the  effect  was  even  more  fascinating  ;  the  moonlit  steeples 
and  towers,  reflected  a  myriad-fold  on  the  facets  of  the  ice,  made 
the  strange  beauty  of  a  scene  which,  even  upon  the  Russians,  does 
not  pall. 

The  following  morning  at  a  little  before  ten  o'clock  the  thunder 
peals  from  the  guns  of  the  fortress  announced  that  the  ceremony 
of  crossing  the  water  had  begun.  Every  year,  as  soon  as  the  river 
is  free  of  the  danger  of  the  larger  masses  of  what  are  miniature 
icebergs,  the  Commandant  of  the  Fortress  is  rowed  over  in  state 
to  the  Winter  Palace  to  cany  to  the  Emperor  a  goblet  of  Neva 
water.  His  Majesty  in  return  fills  the  cup  with  gold  pieces — a  per- 
quisite of  the  Commandant.  These  cunning  officers  used  to  take  care 
to  procure  the  largest  vessel  that  could  be  found,  until  at  last  the 
abuse  was  stopped  and  a  fixed  measure  adopted  for  the  ceremony. 

No  boat  may  cross  the  river  before  the  Commandant,  but  he  is 
followed  by  quite  a  little  fleet  of  river  craft  manned  by  mujihs 
hi  their  different-coloured  shirts,  on  a  bright  morning  a  picturesquely 
quaint  sight.  Salvos  of  artillery ;  curiously-shaped  and  many- 
coloured  boats  ;  guards  presenting  arms  ;  the  rays  of  the  sun 
turning  the  ice-blocks  into  gigantic  opals  ;  the  crowds  watching 
on  the  quays  ;  the  golden  steeples  all  ablaze  with  light  ;  drums 
rattling  and  trumpets  blaring  ;  flags  flying  from  every  window ! 
After  this  fashion  Russia  celebrates  the  funeral  rites  of  the  winter, 
the  baptism  of  the  spring. 

When  the  Almighty  first  set  his  bow  in  the  cloud  it  was  not  more 
welcome  than  the  arrival  of  Palm  Sunday  to  the  starving  Russian. 


Through  the  Winter  277 

It  does  not  make  an  end  of  the  sorrows  of  Lent,  but  it  comes  laden 
with  hope  :  the  austere  and  hungry  days  are  numbered,  and  the 
beginning  of  a  series  of  sublime  ceremonials  brings  with  it  the 
buds  of  a  new  joy  which  will  burst  into  life  with  the  dawn  of  the 
paschal  feast. 

Very  solemn  are  the  observances  of  the  Holy  Week  in  the  Greek 
Church.  The  liturgies  are  grand,  imposing,  soul-stirring  ;  their 
music  so  compelling  and  emotional  that  they  bring  home  to  one 
the  strength  of  Tolstoy's  great  saying,  "  Le  sentiment  religieux 
est  apres  tout  indispensable." 

As  a  race,  judging  by  the  way  in  which  we  face  our  religion,  we 
Britons  are,  I  suppose,  an  unemotional  people.  With  us  ritual 
is  a  question  of  the  individual ;  to  one  man  a  stimulus,  to  his 
neighbour  a  horror.  In  Russia,  on  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  be  a 
national  necessity,  satisfying  an  endemic  craving  ;  to  the  lower 
orders,  indeed,  the  be-all  and  end-all  of  religion  :  not,  as  I  think  I 
have  already  shown,  a  religion  necessarily  acting  as  a  high  moral 
force  or  even  as  a  deterrent,  but  in  some  mystic  way  a  spiritual 
comfort  in  the  present,  as  it  is  in  the  future  the  promise  of  the 
wiping  out  of  all  crime  and  salvation  by  virtue  of  the  great  Sacri- 
fice. For  the  Slav  the  call  to  the  soul  must  be  through  the 
imagination,  and  that  is  where  the  imagery  of  the  Greek  Church 
triumphs.  A  highly  symbolical  ritual  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the 
orthodox  faith,  and  since  ritual  there  must  be,  where  could  you  find 
it  more  reverent,  more  devotional,  more  suggestive  of  the  Divine 
Mystery,  than  in  the  services  of  these  last  days  of  Lent  ?  The 
music  breathes  tragedy ;  the  swelling  voices  of  the  choristers  rise 
from  the  lowest  depth  of  sorrow  to  the  sublimest  heights  of  ecstatic 
adoration  ;  the  canticles  and  antiphons  are  so  entirely  one  with 
the  rites  of  the  Passion  that  I  imagined  that  this  heaven-born 
music  must  be  as  old  as  the  liturgies  themselves,  foreshadowing 
Wagner's  theory  of  the  twin-birth  of  music  and  poetry.  But 
that  is  not  so.  I  was  informed  that  it  is  no  older  than 
the  eighteenth  century.  Could  it,  I  wonder,  have  been  based  upon 
some  much  more  ancient  model  ?  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  these 
services  without  the  solemn  chanting  of  the  priests  which  is  of 
their  very  essence. 


278  Memories 

Palm  Sunday  Eve  is  one  of  the  holiest  of  the  anniversaries  ob- 
served by  the  Greek  Church  ;  none  is  more  pregnant  with  sym- 
bolism. Prince  Gortchakoff,  always  kind,  invited  me  to  attend 
the  evening  service  in  his  chapel.  It  was  a  singularly  impressive 
ceremonial,  not,  of  course,  so  steeped  in  tragic  emotion  as  those 
which  would  follow  later  in  the  week,  for  symbolically  we  were 
celebrating  a  joy,  not  a  death — the  triumphant  procession  when 
the  people  shouted,  Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David,  welcoming 
with  loud  acclaim  the  entry  of  their  King  into  His  capital,  "  coming 
in  the  name  of  the  Lord." 

The  first  striking  feature  of  the  holy  rite  was  the  bringing  in 
of  a  small  table  upon  which  were  set  out  vessels  containing  oil, 
wine,  grain  and  five  loaves  typifying  the  five  barley  loaves  with 
which  the  Saviour  fed  the  five  thousand  in  the  desert  place  near 
Bethsaida.  Very  reverently  these  were  blessed  by  the  priest, 
who  at  the  same  time  offered  up  a  prayer  to  God  that  oil  and  wine 
and  grain  might  not  fail  His  people  during  the  ensuing  year. 

The  great  moment  was  when  the  palm  branches  were  produced, 
carried  in  a  huge  pot  to  be  blessed,  sprinkled  with  holy  water,  and 
incensed  with  the  fumes  of  consecrated  spices  and  gums.  To 
each  of  the  congregation  a  taper  was  given  by  an  attendant,  and 
one  of  the  newly-blessed  palm  branches  was  handed  by  the 
officiating  prest  to  each  of  us.  The  priest  then  entered  the  Holy 
of  Holies,  Sviataia  Sviatuich,  by  the  Doors  of  the  Lord,  and  we 
symbolically  followed  the  Son  of  David  on  his  royal  progress. 
The  Gospel  was  read,  the  blessing  delivered,  and  the  service,  which 
had  lasted  two  hours,  during  which  we  remained  standing,  was 
at  an  end. 

None  but  a  consecrated  priest  may  cross  the  threshold  of  the 
Doors  of  the  Lord  or  enter  the  Sviataia  Sviatuich.  The  crazy 
Emperor  Paul  once  received  a  just  rebuke  from  the  Metropolitan 
for  wishing  to  break  this  law.  The  Emperor  stands  much  in  the 
same  relation  to  the  Orthodox  Church  in  Russia  as  the  King  of 
England  does  to  our  Church.  He  is  the  Head,  that  is,  the  eldest 
son,  of  the  Church,  but  he  cannot  officiate  or  even  vote  in  the  Synod. 
The  Emperor  Paul,  however,  wished,  as  Head  of  the  Church, 
himself  to  conduct  the  service.  Full  of  religious  ardour,  he  arrived 


Through  the  Winter  279 

one  day  by  the  side  door  of  the  altar,  and  was  received  by  the 
Metropolitan.  The  Tsar  called  for  priest's  robes,  announced  his 
intention  of  celebrating  the  Mass,  and  prepared  to  enter  the  Holy 
of  Holies,  when,  just  as  he  was  about  to  pass  the  threshold  of  the 
Doors  of  the  Lord,  the  prelate  stood  before  him,  barring  the  way, 
and  said,  "  Kneel,  sire  !  This  is  your  place.  You  may  go  no 
further."  The  Emperor,  to  do  him  justice,  took  the  reprimand 
well,  and  the  Metropolitan  did  not  suffer  for  his  bold  speech.  This 
story  is  not  recorded  in  history — it  is  not  likely  to  be  ;  but  it  was 
told  me  by  a  Russian  gentleman  of  high  position,  and  is  a  matter 
of  common  knowledge. 

On  the  Thursday  in  Passion  Week  there  is  a  very  interesting 
ceremony  :  the  washing  of  the  feet  of  twelve  priests  in  the  Isaac's 
Cathedral.  I  had  been  misinformed  as  to  the  time,  and  so 
unfortunately  missed  it. 

In  a  Church  in  whose  offices  emotion  plays  so  intense — if  it  did 
not  savour  of  impiety  one  would  be  tempted  to  say  so  dramatic — 
a  part,  Good  Friday  must  inevitably  be  celebrated  by  ceremonies 
imaging  the  blackest  woe.  Nowhere  is  the  tragedy  of  the  Cross 
represented  with  so  much  realism — a  realism  that  might  easily 
have  degenerated  into  something  shocking,  were  it  not  so  hallowed 
by  a  veneration  born  of  the  Divine  Love  which  said,  "  This  do  in 
remembrance  of  Me."  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  on  this 
day  the  orthodox  Christian  lives  through  the  whole  awful  tragedy 
now  nearly  two  thousand  years  old.  No  other  man  sees  it  so 
vividly  before  his  eyes. 

In  the  morning,  torn  by  sorrow,  he  takes  down  the  Body  of  the 
Saviour  from  the  Cross,  and  with  as  much  reverence  as  if  it  were 
a  real  corpse,  lays  it  in  a  lighted  funeral  chapel  to  await  the  burial 
service  of  the  evening.  This  I  was  allowed  to  witness  in  the 
Imperial  Chapel  of  the  Winter  Palace.  The  service  began  with 
a  Mass.  The  priests,  of  whom  there  were  four  besides  the 
arch-priest,  the  deacons,  readers  and  choir,  were  all  in  deep 
mourning  ;  the  latter  in  a  sort  of  Court  dress,  with  swords,  the 
clergy  in  vestments  of  black  velvet  and  silver.  The  Mass  was, 
as  I  was  told,  performed  after  the  traditions  of  the  worship  of  the 
early  Christians  in  the  catacombs.  In  the  centre  of  the  church 


280  Memories 

was  the  bier,  covered  with  a  cloth  representing  an  effigy  of  the 
dead  Saviour,  with  the  Gospel  on  the  breast  as  at  a  funeral. 

Indeed,  the  whole  ceremony  is  a  solemn  funeral  service.  During 
the  Mass  every  person  present  was  presented  with  a  lighted  wax 
taper,  and  the  bier  was  surrounded  by  magnificent  candelabra 
carrying  wax  lights.  As  soon  as  the  Mass  was  over,  the  choir 
drew  themselves  up  in  triple  row  behind  the  priests,  who  stood 
on  each  side  of  the  bier,  the  arch-priest  in  the  centre,  with  two 
deacons  supporting  him,  facing  the  altar.  Then  arose  the  funeral 
dirge,  sung  by  about  fifty  fine  voices,  very  soft  and  still,  the  basses 
especially  making  a  fine  effect — all  the  music  unaccompanied. 
At  the  end  of  the  funeral  chant  the  key  changed,  and  there  followed 
a  louder  canticle.  The  priests,  one  at  each  corner,  and  the  chief 
priest  in  the  middle,  raised  the  bier  upon  their  heads  and  carried 
it  round  the  church,  the  whole  congregation  kneeling  and  touching 
the  ground  with  their  foreheads  while  they  devoutly  crossed  them- 
selves. The  bier  having  been  replaced  and  the  choir  having  taken 
up  their  former  position,  the  deacon  thundered  out  the  Ehtenia, 
a  litany  in  which  the  choir  made  the  responses  "  Gospodi  pomilui  " 
("  Lord,  have  mercy  !  "). 

After  this  the  deacon  read  a  short  passage  from  one  of  the 
epistles,  and  went  into  the  Holy  of  Holies  to  fetch  the  Gospel, 
which  he  presented  with  a  reverence  to  the  chief  priest,  who 
read  a  portion  of  the  Scripture  and  delivered  a  blessing. 

The  Gospel  having  been  taken  back  into  the  Sviataia  Sviatuich, 
the  chief  priest  fell  upon  his  knees  and  made  two  low  obeisances, 
each  time  touching  the  floor  with  his  forehead  ;  drawing  near  to 
the  bier,  he  kissed  the  head  and  feet  of  the  image  and  the  book  of 
the  Gospels  which  lay  upon  the  breast,  and  retired  with  a  third 
obeisance.  Two  by  two,  the  other  priests  followed  his  example, 
each,  as  he  retired,  bowing  to  the  chief  priest  and  to  his  colleague. 
Next  the  deacons,  and  after  them  the  congregation,  beginning  with 
the  ladies  present,  went  through  the  same  reverent  formalities, 
and  the  ceremony  was  at  an  end. 

No  description,  at  least  none  of  which  I  am  the  master,  can 
convey  an  adequate  idea  of  the  solemnity  and  impressive  grandeur 
of  this  rite.  I  can  but  set  down  what  I  saw.  Let  each  man  fill 


Through  the  Winter  281 

in  the  colouring  for  himself ;  the  trappings  of  woe  ;  the  hushed 
voices  of  the  dirge  ;  the  thunder-peals  of  the  deacon  hi  the  Ek- 
ienia ;  the  choking  emotion  of  the  celebrants ;  the  burial  of  the 
dead  Christ ! 

More  precious  than  all  the  gold  and  jewels  and  ornaments  with 
which  the  piety  of  potentates  has  enriched  the  Imperial  chapels 
are  two  relics  which  are  held  in  great  veneration  :  the  hand  of 
St.  John  the  Baptist,  and  the  portrait  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  painted 
by  St.  Luke.  The  hand  of  the  Baptist  was  a  present  given  by 
the  Head  of  the  Order  of  the  Knights  of  Malta  to  the  Emperor 
Paul.  Of  the  picture  by  St.  Luke  I  had  but  a  very  hazy  sight. 
I  should  have  liked  to  have  held  it  in  my  hand,  or  at  any  rate, 
to  have  been  allowed  a  close  inspection  of  it.  No  doubt  I  might 
have  obtained  that  favour  for  the  asking,  but  I  did  not  like  to 
risk  being  considered  indiscreet.  As  it  was,  I  could  see  nothing 
but  a  gorgeous  frame  with  a  golden  crown  and  precious  stones 
such  as  adorn  all  the  sacred  pictures  of  the  Church.  Dim  with 
age,  th*  picture  itself  at  the  distance  at  which  I  saw  it  was  a 
cloud. 

I  wonder  how  much  money  was  spent  in  St.  Petersburg  on 
Saturday,  April  i8th  (30th),  being  Easter  Eve.  It  is  a  great  day 
for  buying  and  selling,  and  the  market  is  so  beset  by  crowds  of 
eager  customers,  keenly  bent  on  buying  the  wherewithal-  to  break 
the  long  fast  which  ends  at  midnight,  that  the  mounted  police 
have  to  muster  in  force  in  order  to  preserve  some  semblance  of 
order.  Shortly  before  midnight  on  Easter  Eve  the  town  was 
illuminated  by  candles  placed  at  intervals  along  the  pavement, 
the  guns  of  the  fortress  began  to  crash  out  their  joy-signals,  and 
the  pious  folk  flocked  to  the  churches  to  hear  the  priest  give  out 
the  glorious  news  of  the  resurrection  of  the  Saviour. 

The  celebration  of  Easter  at  the  Isaac's  Cathedral  is  said  to 
be  quite  magnificent ;  but  I  did  not  see  it,  for  I  was  bidden  to 
keep  the  feast  at  Princess  Kotchoubey's  and  I  could  not  refuse, 
as  she  had  always  been  so  kind  to  me.  The  service  of  a  chapel 
in  a  private  house,  however  grand  it  may  be,  can  never  come  up 
to  the  gorgeous  spectacle  such  as  that  of  the  great  procession  which 
thrice  marches  round  the  colossal  building.  Still  the  ceremony 


282  Memories 

was  very  imposing,  and  the  entertainment  afterwards,  as  always 
where  the  Princess  is  hostess,  sumptuous  in  the  extreme. 

In  the  streets  the  night  which  heralds  Easter  is  a  mad  jubilee. 
Everybody  salutes  everybody  else  with  the  joyful  cry,  first  uttered 
by  the  priest  in  church,  "  Christos  Voskres  "  ("  Christ  has  arisen  "), 
and  everybody  answers  "  Dieistvelno  on  Voskres  "  ("  Of  a  truth  He 
has  arisen").  By  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  the  proletariat  is 
very  drunk  and  very  happy.  The  noise  and  the  shouting  and 
the  merriment  might  be  in  honour  of  a  great  victory,  as  indeed 
it  is — the  Divine  victory  over  death  ! 

By  dawn  the  booths  and  merry-go-rounds  of  the  Butter  Week 
have  sprung  up  like  mushrooms  in  an  August  night,  and  all  through 
Easter  Sunday  the  cry  of  "  Christos  Voskres  "  will  be  dinning  in  our 
ears.  As  for  the  poor  Emperor,  the  twenty-four  hours  were 
enough  to  tire  him  out.  Think  of  having  to  kiss  from  seven  to 
eight  hundred  people  directly  after  midnight ;  and  then  to  begin 
again  with  deputations  from  each  of  the  regiments  of  the  Guards 
after  breakfast !  The  Empress  had  to  plead  her  poor  health  in 
order  to  escape  from  the  fatigue  of  these  receptions.  I  some- 
times thought  that  it  must  need  the  strength  of  a  Samson  to  bear 
the  weight  of  duty  that  is  laid  upon  a  Russian  Emperor.  Alexander 
the  Second  carried  himself  nobly  and  equably  through  the  weary 
rites  and  ceremonies  that  are  the  heritage  of  Tsardom's  woe  ; 
but  what  a  strain  it  must  often  have  been  ! 


After  the  long  weeks  of  fasting  and  the  ten  wild  days  of  feast 
and  revelry,  St.  Petersburg  began  to  calm  down  and  the  world, 
high  and  low,  was  at  peace. 

May  4. — A  storm  of  indignation  was  raised  by  the  arrival  of 
the  Independence  Beige  with  the  report  of  a  speech  delivered  by 
Pope  Pius  IX.  in  the  Consistory  upon  the  occasion  of  a  canoniza- 
tion. His  Holiness,  while  in  the  same  breath  disclaiming  any 
intention  of  fomenting  revolt  or  of  encouraging  treason,  made  a 
furious  attack  upon  the  Tsar  for  his  policy  in  Poland  He  accused 
him  of  endeavouring  to  uproot  the  Roman  Catholic  religion,  of 


Through  the  Winter  283 

exciting  rebellion  under  the  pretence  of  quelling  it,  of  transporting 
whole  populations  to  frozen  and  desolate  regions,  and  of  removing 
bishops  from  the  functions  to  which  the  Church  had  called  them. 
There  is  nothing  so  dangerous,  nothing  so  misleading  as  falsehood 
with  a  thin  veneer  of  truth.  No  one  can  deny  that  great  numbers 
of  Poles  had  been  deported  ;  but  many,  if  not  most,  of  them  had 
been  sent  to  Samara,  a  province  in  the  south-east  of  European 
Russia,  rich  in  that  famous  black  earth  which  makes  a  farmers' 
paradise,  in  which  numbers  of  prosperous  German  colonists  were 
doing  a  thriving  trade  in  wheat,  tobacco,  cattle  and  horses,  while 
even  those  who  were  sent  to  Siberia  were  described  to  me  by  an 
Englishman  who  had  just  come  from  there  as  quite  happy  and 
comfortably  established  with  their  families.  Siberia  is  by  no 
means  the  cruel  country  about  which  such  terrible  tales  have 
been  served  up  for  European  consumption,  dressed  with  all  the 
condiments  of  fanatic  hatred. 

Even  Dostoievski — no  friend  to  the  Russian  Government — 
when  writing  against  the  prison  system  of  Siberia,  to  which  he 
was  sent  for  political  reasons,  speaks  almost  with  affection  of 
the  country  itself.  It  was  the  life  of  the  criminal  convict  in  Siberia 
which  was  such  a  nightmare,  and  with  that  the  transported  Poles 
had  nothing  to  do.  But  Siberia  was  always  a  good  name  of  terror, 
and  as  such  the  Pope  made  rhetorical  capital  of  it.  As  regards 
the  question  of  uprooting  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Poland, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Greek  Church  has  always  been 
very  intolerant.  There  was  indeed  a  time — hi  the  Middle  Ages — 
when  the  followers  of  other  creeds  were  not  looked  upon  as  Chris- 
tians ;  the  Russian  chroniclers  called  the  Roman  Catholics  "  un- 
baptized  Latins,"  holding  that  there  could  be  no  baptism  without 
total  immersion  ;  and  when  the  Tsar  received  ambassadors  it 
was  customary  for  him  to  give  them  his  hand,  but  in  the  audience 
hall  there  was  kept  a  golden  vessel  in  which  the  autocrat  might 
wash  off  the  contamination. 

Though  these  prejudices  were  dead  and  matters  of  history,  the 
hatred  which  inspired  them  was  very  much  alive,  and  the  fighting 
in  Poland  was  in  a  great  measure  a  war  of  religion.  Still  it  was 
simply  an  invention  of  the  priests,  wishful  to  keep  up  the  spirit 


284  Memories 

of  rebellion,  to  say  that  there  was  any  desire  on  the  part  of  the 
Government  to  extirpate  their  faith. 

The  Polish  peasants,  who  were  as  ignorant  as  their  own  cattle, 
were  told  by  the  priests  that  the  worship  of  God  according  to  the 
Catholic  creed  was  forbidden  in  Russia,  and  that  persons  who 
died  in  that  communion  were  refused  Christian  burial,  and  thrown 
out  into  the  forests  and  wastes  to  rot  or  be  devoured  by  the  wolves. 
In  order  to  disabuse  the  Poles  of  these  ideas,  the  deputation  of 
peasants  of  whom  I  have  already  spoken  were  taken  to  Mass  in 
the  great  Romish  church  and  also  to  visit  the  Roman  Catholic 
burial  ground.  Seeing,  it  was  hoped,  would  be  believing. 

In  official  life  both  Roman  Catholics  and  Lutherans  have  held 
high  places.  Curiously  enough  Count  Nesselrode,  the  famous 
Chancellor,  was  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England,  having  been 
baptized  on  board  a  British  man-of-war,  and  till  his  death  he 
remained  a  faithful  son  of  our  creed.  Count  Creptovitch,  who 
was  formerly  Minister  in  England,  and  whom  I  knew  well,  was 
a  Roman  Catholic,  and  held  a  great  position.  Many  others  could 
be  named.  But  would  Count  Creptovitch,  a  devout  Roman 
Catholic,  have  given  the  support  of  his  great  name  to  a  Govern- 
ment pledged  to  the  extirpation  of  his  communion  from  any  part 
of  the  Empire  ?  The  thing  was  absurd  and  incredible  on  the 
face  of  it. 

Of  the  third  accusation  brought  by  Pope  Pius — that  of  the 
removal  of  the  bishops — it  was  not  difficult  to  dispose.  The  Arch- 
bishop of  Warsaw  and  the  Bishop  of  Vilna  had  been  politically 
very  troublesome — not  a  matter  of  infrequent  occurrence  among 
the  soldiers  of  a  very  militant  Church.  They  were  requested  to 
leave  their  sees  until  matters  should  have  settled  down,  and  they 
had  not  much  to  complain  of.  They  were  extricated  without 
any  loss  of  dignity  from  a  very  difficult  position  and  were  allowed 
to  retain  all  their  honours,  titles  and  emoluments,  a  slight  deduc- 
tion being  made  from  the  latter  to  cover  certain  expenses  which 
were  a  liability  of  their  offices  ;  and  there  seemed  no  reason  to 
preclude  their  return  in  happier  and  more  peaceful  times  once 
more  to  take  possession  of  the  charge  of  their  flocks. 

The  Pope's  speech  was  certainly  injudicious  and  ill-timed.     His 


Through  the  Winter  285 

Holiness  had  evidently  been  misinformed  ;    zeal   had,  not  for  the 
first  time  in  the  world's  history,  outrun  truth. 

May  the  gth. — I  suppose  that  there  could  hardly  be  a  more 
magnificent  military  spectacle  than  that  of  the  Spring  Parade 
held  on  the  Champ  de  Mars.  The  Empress  and  all  the  great 
people  of  St.  Petersburg  were  present  in  a  grand  stand,  by  which 
a  little  ragged  cur  had  taken  up  his  position  and,  sitting  upright 
on  his  tail,  watched  the  proceedings  as  a  rather  captious  critic 
from  beginning  to  end,  moving  his  head  from  side  to  side  with 
unflagging  interest.  When  the  Emperor  rode  on  to  the  ground 
surrounded  by  his  brilliant  staff  of  generals  and  aides-de-camp, 
he  passed  in  front  of  each  corps  and  to  each  he  addressed  the 
question,  "  Are  you  well,  my  children  ?  "  and  the  men  thundered 
out,  "  We  wish  you  health  !  "  When  the  march  past  began,  the 
Tsar  signified  his  approbation  of  each  squadron  or  battalion,  and 
the  men  roared  with  one  voice,  "  Glad  to  do  our  best  "  There 
were  thirty- two  thousand  men  in  all,  under  the  orders  of  the 
Grand  Duke  Nicholas* — a  noble-looking  host,  as  gorgeous  as 
glittering  uniforms  could  make  them.  At  the  head  of  the  other 
troops,  the  mail-clad  Circassian  body-guard,  dashing  past  at  a 
gallop,  some  of  them  throwing  down  their  scimitars  in  front  of 
them  and  heeling  over  to  pick  them  up  again  at  the  saluting- 
point,  made  a  gallant  and  fantastic  show,  with  just  a  touch  of 
Asian  mystery  to  add  a  glamour  of  the  East  to  the  picture. 

The  cavalry  of  the  Guard,  splendidly  mounted,  with  their 
cuirasses  and  helmets  flaming  hi  the  sunshine  ;  the  pennons  of 
the  lancers  ;  the  infantry  ;  the  artillery  ;  all  spick  and  span, 
showed  off  the  panoply  of  war  in  its  most  attractive  shape — 
altogether  a  dazzling  pageant.  Whether  it  was  anything  more 
than  that  one  witness  seemed  to  doubt,  for  when  the  last  man 
had  marched  past  and  the  Emperor  turned  to  leave  the  ground, 
the  little  dog  got  up,  stretched  himself,  yawned  and  proceeded  to 
mark  his  contempt  of  the  whole  proceedings  in  the  most  accen- 
tuated fashion.  One  Russian  gentleman,  a  statesman  in  a  very 

•  The  father  of   the  present  (1915)  Commander -in -Chief  of  the  Russian 
army  in  Poland  and  Galicia. 


286  Memories 

high  position,  told  me  that  it  had  been  his  custom  for  years  to 
attend  this  annual  review,  wondering  at  its  stateliness,  and  that 
his  pride  used  to  rise  in  hero-worship  when  he  thought  of  the 
invincibility  of  these  glorious  warriors. 

The  Alma  and  Inkermann  shook  him  in  his  faith,  and  since 
then  he  had  left  off  his  yearly  visit  to  the  Champ  de  Mars ;  there 
was  "  trop  de  clinquant  et  trop  peu  de  realite."  He  agreed  with 
the  little  dog. 

One  thing  struck  even  my  unskilled  civilian  eye  :  as  the  artillery 
came  rattling  under  a  window  in  the  British  Embassy,  which 
looked  on  to  the  parade  ground,  I  noticed  that  no  two  batteries 
were  armed  with  the  same  pattern  of  gun.  I  could  not  help  won- 
dering what  would  be  the  effect  of  this  in  action  ;  whether  there 
was  not  great  risk  of  mistakes  in  the  serving  out  of  ammunition, 
and  other  conceivable  causes  of  confusion. 

That  evening  at  dinner  at  the  Club  Anglais*  I  chanced  to  sit 
next  to  a  general  officer  with  whom  I  was  acquainted,  and  I  asked 
him  what  was  the  reason  of  this  difference  in  the  equipment  of 
the  various  batteries.  His  answer  was  that  the  great  authorities 
on  artillery  had  not  yet  come  to  a  conclusion  as  to  what  was  the 
best  service  gun,  so  Russia  was  biding  her  time  and  allowing  the 
other  armies  to  make  experiments  for  her  benefit. 

It  so  happened,  however,  that  I  knew  of  six  or  more  agents 
for  different  gun  factories  in  England,  France,  and  Germany, 
who  were  staying  in  St.  Petersburg  with  well-filled  pouches  touting 
for  their  several  firms  ;  and  this  had  been  going  on  for  months  ; 
so  the  Russian  gunners  had  to  deal  with  weapons  of  many  patterns, 
the  efficiency  of  the  army  being  made  of  no  account  so  long  as 
those  pouches  continued  to  empty  themselves  and  bulge  once 
more.  This  was  a  point  upon  which  the  Embassies  were  better 
informed  than  the  ministers  of  the  Emperor. 

*  An  excellent  and  hospitable  club,  "  Anglais  "  only  in  name,  of  which  the 
corps  diplomatique  were  made  honorary  members. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

1864 

MOSCOW 

May  1 8. 
"  T  S   there   anybody   here   who   can  speak   English  ?     Oh  !     IS 

J.  there  anybody  here  who  can  speak  English  ?  "  A  piteous 
cry  from  a  brother  Briton  in  distress  must  be  attended  to.  It 
came  from  a  first-class  carriage  in  the  train  for  Moscow  standing 
in  the  station  at  St.  Petersburg.  I  found  a  young  man  trying 
in  vain  to  come  to  some  understanding  with  the  guard ;  he  knew 
neither  French  nor  German  nor  Russian  ;  indeed,  his  English  was 
none  of  the  best,  his  aspirates  being  indiscriminately  used  or 
omitted. 

When  I  had  solved  his  difficulties  for  him  he  told  me  that  he  was 
travelling  for  pleasure  to  see  the  world.  He  had  been  staying 
at  the  boarding  house  chiefly  used  by  "  drummers" — travellers  of 
English  commercial  houses.  Of  the  country,  its  institutions  and 
customs  he  knew  absolutely  nothing ;  but  the  drummers  had 
stored  his  mind  with  all  manner  of  gruesome  tales  of  the  dangers 
and  terrors  threatening  the  unwary  traveller.  Murray's  guide  to 
him  was  all-sufficient,  unless  he  found  himself  in  some  position  of 
alarming  difficulty,  when  he  would  dismally  howl  his  "  cuckoo- 
cry"  "  Is  there  anybody,"  etc.  One  night  he  had  nearly  collapsed 
with  fear.  He  had  been  to  some  place  of  entertainment  and  was 
being  driven  home  when,  finding  himself  in  a  rather  narrow,  dark 
street,  he  took  into  his  head  that  his  coachman  was  decoying  him 
to  some  thieves'  den  (Oh  !  those  drummers  !)  where  he  would 
be  robbed  and  murdered.  He  stopped  the  astonished  coachman, 

287 


288  Memories 

who  must  have  thought  him  mad,  and  began  yelling  for  help.  His 
shouts  soon  brought  a  good-natured  polyglot  Russian,  who  assured 
him  that  all  was  well,  and  that  he  was  simply  being  taken  to  his 
destination  by  the  nearest  way.  Two  or  three  days  later  I  met 
him  in  Moscow  in  one  of  the  churches,  listening  with  rapt  atten- 
tion to  a  very  dirty  monk  extolling  in  Russian  the  miraculous 
powers  of  certain  relics.  His  journal,  if  he  kept  one,  would  have 
been  interesting. 

Prince  Boris  Galitzin,  a  very  smart  young  officer  hi  the  Chevalier- 
Gardes,  a  famous  leader  of  cotillons  in  the  great  houses  of  St.  Peters- 
burg, was  going  to  Moscow  with  his  wife  at  the  same  tune  as  myself, 
and  so  we  had  agreed  to  meet  and  lionize  the  famous  old  city  to- 
gether. It  was  of  course  a  great  advantage  to  me,  for  not  only 
had  I  very  pleasant  friends,  whose  company  was  a  joy,  but  I  also 
benefited  by  certain  special  permits  with  which  they  were  armed. 
What  treasures  we  saw  ! — gold,  silver,  precious  stones  and  pearls. 
What  holy  relics  did  Boris  have  to  kiss  ! — not  that  he,  as  an  advanced 
Greek,  had  much  faith  in  them  or  in  their  miracles  ;  his  reverence 
for  them  was  something  like  that  of  Naaman  the  Syrian,  when  he 
prayed  that  if  he  should  enter  the  house  of  Rimmon  with  his  master 
leaning  upon  his  hand,  he  might  be  forgiven  for  bowing  himself 
down  because  it  was  a  question  of  duty. 

The  French  hi  1812  looted  as  much  as  they  could,  but  on  their 
approach  the  treasures  and  relics  were  sent  off  to  Novgorod.  They 
must,  in  spite  of  all  precautions,  have  found  a  great  deal,  for  the 
wealth  of  the  churches  is  prodigious.  One  holy  Saint  stopped  their 
robberies  by  a  miracle.  The  ruffians  were  about  to  rifle  his  tomb 
when  the  corpse  slowly  lifted  its  hand  in  warning.  They  fled, 
terror-stricken  at  the  sign,  but  the  dead  hand  remained  raised,  a 
threat  for  ever  against  sacrilege. 

It  is  really  no  matter  of  surprise  that  there  should  be  so  few 
buildings  of  great  antiquity,  so  few  ancient  historical  monuments 
in  Russia.  It  is  true  that  at  Kief,  the  old  capital  of  the  Grand 
Princes,  Jaroslav  built  the  stone  church  of  St.  Sophia  in  the  middle 
of  the  eleventh  century,  about  the  same  time  as  the  Conqueror  built 
the  Tower  of  London,  but  it  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  that  houses  of  stone  began  to  be  the  fashion.  Till 


Moscow  289 

then  the  dwellings  of  rich  and  poor  alike  were  built  of  wood  upon 
piles,  much  like  the  homes  of  their  Scythian  forbears,  described  by 
Herodotus.  As  a  consequence  fire  had  freedom  of  destruction, 
as  it  has  in  many  great  Oriental  cities,  where  I  have  seen  whole 
quarters  burned  to  ashes  in  a  single  night ;  and  so  it  was  that  when 
Ivan,  the  son  of  Daniel,  established  his  capital  at  Moscow  in  1330, 
it  was  no  more  than  a  great  aggregation  of  wooden  houses,  the  only 
stone  building  being  the  Church  of  Spas  na  Bory  (the  Saviour  on 
the  Cross) ,  which  was  said  to  be  of  immense  antiquity. 

It  was  not  until  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  that  Dmitri 
Donski,  the  conqueror  of  the  Tartars  on  the  Don,  began  building  the 
famous  Kremlin.*  By  degrees  came  trade,  and  merchants  from  all 
parts  of  the  world,  bartering  their  goods  against  Muscovite  furs, 
cloth,  linen  and  leather,  for  which  Russia  had  already  become 
famous. 

In  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  during  the  reign  of  Ivan 
the  Terrible,  two  great  fires  almost  annihilated  the  city.  The  first 
broke  out  in  the  merchants'  quarter  and  the  second  burned  the 
Tsar's  palace  to  cinders.  The  infuriated  populace  laid  both  these 
fires  to  the  account  of  the  witchcraft  of  Princess  Glinski,  the  widow 
of  a  man  who  had  died  in  prison,  after  his  eyes  had  been  put  out 
as  a  punishment  for  having  rebuked  Ivan's  mother,  Helen,  for  her 
conduct  with  her  lover,  Ortchina.  One  of  the  supposed  witch's 
sons  was  murdered  with  his  followers  at  an  altar  on  which  they 
had  taken  refuge  for  sanctuary,  and  the  wretched  woman  herselt 
fled  for  her  life  with  her  other  son.  What  an  easy  matter  revenge 
was  in  the  days  when  men  believed  in  witchcraft  ? 

But  in  spite  of  fires  and  Poles  and  other  misfortunes,  Moscow 
continued  to  flourish  in  ever-increasing  beauty,  until  at  the  beginning 
of  the  eighteenth  century  Peter  the  Great,  in  love  with  the  sea  and 
with  ships,  must  needs  transfer  the  seat  of  government  to  his  newly- 
founded  seaport,  and  so  gave  the  death-blow  to  the  political,  or 
perhaps  it  would  be  more  true  to  say  the  official,  importance  of  the 
old  capital.  But  there  was  more  than  the  intoxication  of  the  sea 
in  his  move.  So  long  as  Moscow  should  remain  unrivalled  on  a 
pinnacle  of  glory,  so  long  would  the  old  faith  and  the  glamour  of 

*  A  Tartar  word  signifying  "  Citadel." 
VUL.  i  iq 


29°  Memories 

old  traditions  remain  as  an  obstacle  to  the  Germanizing  reforms 
which  he  had  at  heart.  These  old  feelings — which  he  knew  how  to 
turn  to  profit  at  his  need,  while  he  affected  to  despise  them — must 
be  swept  away.  As  a  stronghold  of  the  Church  the  Sacred  City — 
Moscow  and  the  Patriarchate — had  even  in  the  most  savage  days 
stood  between  the  Tsar  and  his  will.  Let  them  perish  !  So  the 
Court  and  the  Government  were  gone,  and  the  Patriarchate  with 
them.  But  all  these  changes — the  plucking  of  beards  literally  and 
figuratively  from  men's  chins,  the  wholesale  attack  upon  all  those 
customs  which  were  dearest  to  the  Russian  soul — were  in  one  respect 
a  failure.  The  dignity,  the  sanctity  of  Moscow  remained  untouched. 
No  spark  of  its  sacred  light  was  extinguished.  To  every  true  child 
of  Russia  Moscow  remained  the  Holy  Mother.  Witness  1812. 
Napoleon  would  have  met  with  a  less  fierce  opposition  had  he 
attacked  St.  Petersburg.  That  would  have  been  warfare.  What 
Peter  did  was  sacrilege.  It  was  a  pious  Russian,  Rostopchin,  who 
once  more  set  fire  to  Moscow  lest  the  sacred  city  with  its  stores  of 
provisions  and  necessaries  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  im- 
pious invader.  What  a  difference  that  fire  made  to  the  horrors 
of  the  terrible  retreat ! 

No  Russian  sees  the  towers  of  the  holy  city  in  the  distance  without 
reverently  baring  his  head  and  crossing  himself,  and  even  the  guards 
in  the  railway  trains  keep  a  sharp  look-out  lest  they  should  fail  to 
make  the  prescribed  obeisance  at  the  first  coming  into  sight  of  the 
venerated  towers  and  steeples.  The  Russian  is  sensitive,  impres- 
sionable and  romantic  above  any  people  with  which  I  have  come 
in  contact.  The  religion,  the  poetry,  the  music  and  the  traditions 
of  his  country  are  the  very  essence  of  his  nature,  fibres  interwoven 
round  one  centre,  which  is  to  him  as  his  own  heart,  and  that  centre 
is  Moscow. 

There  was  one  man  living  in  Moscow  whom  I  was  most  anxious 
to  see  :  M.  Gerebzoff,  the  author  of  "  La  Civilisation  en  Russie." 
He  was  famous  as  a  man  of  letters,  known,  moreover,  as  a  typical 
gentleman  of  the  old  school,  who  had  never  bowed  before  the  altars 
of  St.  Petersburg,  but  had  remained  absolutely  faithful  to  the 
traditions  of  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  glorious  past  of  his  country. 
Prince  Galitzin,  who  knew  him,  very  good-naturedly  asked  him  to 


Moscow  29* 

tea  one  evening  to  meet  me.  He  came  with  two  or  three  others — 
men  of  the  same  kidney  as  himself — and  we  had  a  most  interesting 
talk.  He  had  the  appearance  of  a  very  old  man,  though  in  truth  he 
was  hardly  past  middle-age ;  but  his  infirmities  added  long  years 
to  his  reckoning,  and  he  was  nearly  stone  blind  ;  physically  he  was 
weak,  but  mentally  full  of  activity,  enthusiasm  and  prejudices — 
just  as  I  had  imagined  him.  What  added  to  the  interest  of  his 
conversation  was  the  fact  that  he  had  been  writing  a  book  on 
England,  full  of  admiration  for  our  institutions  and  methods.  But 
Boris  Galitzin  knew  that  I  should  be  eager  to  hear  him  talk  about  his 
own  country,  so  he  deftly  turned  the  conversation  to  the  question 
of  the  capital. 

"  St.  Petersburg  !  "  exclaimed  M.  Gerebzoff,  "  a  mere  marsh, 
just  fit  to  harbour  frogs  and  wolves  and  Finns.  You  must  not 
imagine  " — turning  to  me — "  that  hi  St.  Petersburg  you  can  come  to 
any  true  opinion  about  Russia,"  and  then  he  went  off  at  score. 
Even  Moscow  he  would  not  admit  to  be  the  true  capital  for  his 
country.  Kief  would  be  the  most  advantageous  metropolis.  His 
argument  was  this.  The  theory  of  a  capital  is  that  every  native 
of  the  country  should  look  upon  it  as  his.  Moscow  is  to  Vladimir 
and  Kief  what  St.  Petersburg  is  to  Moscow — a  modern  imposition. 
Moscow  might  be  the  official  capital,  but  the  native  of  Little  Russia 
would  still  look  upon  the  ancient  Kief  as  his  capital.  But  if  Kief 
were  the  seat  of  government,  Petersburger,  Muscovite,  Volhynian, 
Podolian,  White  Russian,  and  perhaps  even  at  last  Pole,  would 
loyally  rally  round  the  old  mother-city.  The  spirit  of  separation 
would  be  exorcized,  and  there  would  be  one  Russia  with  one  language 
and  one  mind.  This  was  no  new  idea  of  which  M.  Gerebzoff 
held  the  patent.  Many  Russians  had  professed  the  same  faith, 
especially  the  violent  nationalists. 

At  the  same  time  it  must  be  remembered  that  to  an  enormous 
majority  of  their  countrymen  Moscow  is  so  intimately  bound  up 
with  the  great  crises  of  their  fatherland,  such  as  the  occupation  by 
the  Poles  and  their  expulsion,  and  the  episode  of  1812,  and  so  vene- 
rated as  the  high  altar  of  their  faith,  that  Kief  as  a  capital,  in  spite 
of  all  its  sanctity  and  its  remote  antiquity,  can  never  in  their 
opinion  be  more  than  an  academic  problem.  I  have  given  here  a 
VOL.  i  19* 


292  Memories 

very  brief  precis  of  M.  Gerebzoff's  talk.  But  I  could  wish  that 
some  of  our  statesmen  who  seem  to  advocate  a  return  to  the 
Heptarchy  could  have  heard  his  eloquent  advocacy  of  a  united 
empire.  As  to  that  when  I  was  in  Russia  there  were  no  two  schools, 
no  two  opinions. 

Of  all  the  strangely  quaint  buildings  in  Moscow — perhaps  of  the 
world — the  most  arresting  is  the  Church  of  Vassili  Blagennii,  stand- 
ing at  the  entrance  to  the  Kremlin ;  it  was  erected  by  Ivan  the 
Terrible  in  honour  of  Basil,  the  crazy  monk  of  Moscow — the  only 
man  who  ever  dared  to  rebuke  him — and  of  the  victory  which 
wrested  Kazan  from  the  Tartars  in  1554.  Designed  by  one  madman 
at  the  command  of  a  second  and  to  the  glory  of  a  third,  it  looks  as 
if  it  had  been  planned  in  an  ecstatic  mood  by  the  capricious  fantasy 
of  King  Oberon's  court  architect.  One  can  picture  to  oneself  his 
craftsmen,  gnomes,  trolls  and  Nibelungen,  busily  at  work  sawing, 
planing,  hammering  ;  shaping  stones,  beating  out  iron  and  gold  and 
silver  and  copper ;  fashioning  pinnacles  and  cupolas  and  towers 
into  weird  forms  and  grotesque  combinations  ;  making  up  a  structure 
unlike  anything  in  Heaven  or  upon  earth,  baffling  description — 
something  to  make  a  man  rub  his  eyes  in  wonder  and  ask  himself 
whether  it  can  be  reality  or  a  dream  of  ghost-land.  Clearly  the  work 
of  a  man  gay,  happy,  unrestrained,  laughing  at  all  prescribed  rule 
and  convention.  Strange  to  say,  this  weird  Saracenic  conception 
was  born  in  an  Italian  brain  in  the  days  of  the  Rinascimento  ! 

When  it  was  finished,  and  men  lifted  their  hands  in  wonder,  the 
artist  in  his  folly  bragged  that  this  was  not  to  be  taken  as  the 
measure  of  his  powers,  or  as  having  dried  up  the  wellspring  of  his 
imagination  ;  he  could  do  better  yet.  An  unwise  boast  which  cost 
him  dear ;  for  lest  the  eccentricities  and  beauties  that  he  had  fathered 
should  ever,  as  he  threatened,  be  beaten,  the  Terrible  Tsar  promptly 
caused  the  poor  Italian's  eyes  to  be  put  out.  Who  can  account  for 
the  wild  whims  of  fancy  ?  Why  should  the  thought  of  the  savage 
beauty  and  fateful  sadness  of  this  sacred  building  bring  back  to 
my  mind  without  rhyme  or  reason  the  memory  of  a  beautiful  mad 
girl  who  used  to  wander  singing  and  dancing  in  the  craziest  gyra- 
tions through  the  streets  of  a  little  country  town  in  France  which 
1  knew  as  a  youngster  ?  The  thing  would  be  impossible  in  these 


Moscow  293 

days.  She  was  very  lovely,  but  in  her  loveliness,  which  had  been 
so  cruel  to  her,  there  was  something  weird,  something  remote  and 
mystic  and  tragic,  that  seemed  to  belong  to  another  sphere. 

The  fascination  of  this  wonder-church  must  be  of  the  same 
order.  Brilliant  beauty,  the  sad  gaiety  of  madness,  the  cloud  of 
a  cruel  tragedy — these  make  up  its  story.  Memory  is  like  a  lute 
strung  with  all  manner  of  strange  chords.  The  Church  of  St. 
Vassili  touched  one  of  them. 

The  Kremlin  is  the  diadem  of  the  river  Moskva  as  Windsor  Castle 
is  the  diadem  of  the  Thames.  It  has  its  psychological  moment, 
like  "  fair  Melrose."  For  the  one  it  is  the  "  pale  moonlight,"  for 
the  other  if  you  would  "  see  it  aright,"  crossing  the  river,  you  must 
go  to  the  Sparrows'  Hill  at  sunset,  and  stand  where  Napoleon  stood, 
waiting  in  vain  for  the  keys  of  the  gates  of  the  citadel  to  be  brought 
to  him  ;  and  if  you  have  the  luck  that  I  had,  to  hit  upon  a  glorious 
setting  sun,  you  will  have  a  sight  that  will  remain  with  you  till 
your  dying  day. 

No  skill  of  painter  could  convey  the  faintest  idea  of  its  strange 
beauty,  varying  as  it  does  from  minute  to  minute  ;  bathed  in  a 
flood  of  golden  sunshine,  the  flame-coloured  walls  and  towers  and 
grotesquely-shaped  steeples  and  belfries  of  the  Kremlin  are  a  blaze 
of  burnished  metal,  like  the  crown  of  some  huge  Gargantuan  hero  j 
then,  as  the  sun  lowers  on  the  horizon,  they  begin,  like  the  dying 
dolphins  of  fable,  to  flash  out  chameleon  tints  of  all  the  colours  of 
the  rainbow ;  gradually  the  rosy  pink  steals  over  them,  just  as  it 
does  over  the  snowy  points  of  the  high  Alps,  fading  into  the  cold 
violet — not  the  darkness — of  a  night  almost  as  luminous  as  day, 
against  which  the  sharp  lines  stand  out  with  a  severity  altogether 
foreign  to  their  fantastic  beauty.  The  chill  serenity  of  a  nightless 
night  gives  a  new  aspect  to  the  barbaric  splendour  of  the  mighty 
citadel.  For  the  moment  the  stilly  peace  casts  a  holy  spell  even 
over  the  memory  of  Ivan  the  Terrible. 

Only  for  the  moment ;  for  the  devilish  spirit  of  the  Tsar  seems  to 
haunt  all  Moscow.  Wherever  you  may  go,  you  are  reminded  of 
him  and  of  his  horrors.  You  are  taken  to  see  the  Romanoff  House, 
the  home  of  Mikhail  Feodorovitch,  the  founder  of  the  present 
dynasty,  a  perfect  specimen  of  a  great  Boyarin's  house  at  the 


294  Memories 

beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,  instinct  with  the  spirit  of  the 
Orient ;  low,  vaulted  rooms,  the  ceilings  and  walls  covered  with 
frescoes  and  arabesques  of  curious  designs.  The  doors  are  very  low, 
for  cunning  old  Nikita  Romanoff,  grandfather  of  the  first  Tsar  of 
his  race,  was  determined  that  those  who  entered  his  house  or  his 
presence  should  do  proper  obeisance ;  even  the  lady  of  the  party, 
not  a  tall  woman,  had  to  bend  nearly  double  as  she  crept  in. 
Everything  is  kept  in  religious  order :  all  the  furniture,  down  to 
the  very  toys  with  which  the  future  Tsar  used  to  play.  One  hardly 
expected  to  see  a  relic  of  Ivan  here.  Yet  even  in  this  Romanoff 
family  shrine  is  preserved  his  staff,  an  ingeniously  cruel  weapon, 
the  top  fashioned  as  a  huge  bird,  with  which  in  playful  moods  he 
would  fell  an  unfortunate  courtier  or  two,  and  the  ferrule  a  sharpened 
point  of  iron,  with  which,  leaning  upon  it  with  all  his  weight,  he 
would  pierce  the  foot  of  some  wretch  whom  he  called  up  for  a  close 
and  familiar  conversation,  pinning  him  to  the  floor.  Strange 
caresses  !  The  barbarities  to  which  great  nobles  and  courtiers  were 
submitted  pass  all  belief.  There  is  a  little  tower  hi  the  Kremlin 
from  which  Ivan  would  look  down  upon  the  great  square  below  and 
feast  his  eyes  upon  the  tortures  of  his  victims,  tortures  ordered  by 
himself  and  in  which  he  would  sometimes  lend  a  hand.  The 
treacheries  of  some  of  his  towns — Novgorod,  Volkof,  Pleskof, 
Tver  and  Moscow  itself,  accused  of  intriguing  with  the  Poles — gave 
him  a  fine  opportunity  for  indulging  in  his  favourite  pastimes. 

As  for  the  guilty  traitors  of  Novgorod,  they  were  driven  into  a 
huge  inclosed  pen,  and  Ivan,  with  his  eldest  son,  rode  in  and 
speared  them  like  wild  boars  till  they  were  tired  of  the  sport ! 
And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  that  is  true  in  these  stories,  and  perhaps 
of  much  more  that  is  legendary,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  left  an 
unpopular  memory  behind  him — indeed,  I  have  heard  Russians 
Speak  kindly  and  almost  affectionately  of  this  fiend  as  a  sort  of 
jovial  viveur  rather  than  as  a  tyrant  to  be  execrated.  As  for  Peter 
the  Great,  he  frankly  admired  him  and,  making  allowance  for  the 
difference  in  centuries,  imitated  him  ;  no  doubt  he  would  have 
gone  further  had  he  dared,  but  times  had  changed,  and  there  was 
a  limit  even  to  his  audacity. 

There  is  a  new  dynasty  and  a  new  capital,  but  the  memory  of 


Moscow  295 

Ivan  the  Fourth  is  yet  green  and,  strange  to  say,  it  is  not  hideous. 
There  was,  no  doubt,  a  certain  picturesqueness  about  him,  as  there 
was  about  our  own  Henry  the  Eighth,  who  dealt  out  death  with 
no  niggard  hand,  and  who  still,  in  story  and  legend,  lives  as  a  sort 
of  hero.  A  strong  man  of  arms  always  awakens  a  certain  ad- 
miration, and  no  doubt  it  was  a  fine  sight  for  the  citizens  of  Moscow 
to  see  the  fierce  Tsar  ride  out  bare-headed  through  the  Saviour's 
Gates  at  the  head  of  his  splendidly  caparisoned  strelzi  and 
spritchniki  (archers  and  bodyguard).  Tailors  and  saddlers  and 
armourers  are  rare  makers  of  fame. 

With  what  wise  judgment  and  loving  care  the  Russians  preserve 
their  old  monuments  !  Where  any  restoration  is  needed  it  is 
carried  out  with  such  discreet  skill  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
detect  the  new  from  the  old,  and  so  the  approach  to  the  Kremlin 
through  the  Spasskia  Vorotui  (the  Saviour's  Gates),  with  then* 
beautiful  tower,  leads  to  a  succession  of  pictures  which  are  not 
fragments  of  the  old  world  clumsily  pieced  together,  but  the 
sixteenth  century  itself,  whole,  sound  and  without  a  blemish. 
Bare  your  head  as  you  go  through  these  mystic  gates,  for  even  the 
Emperor  of  all  the  Russias  dare  not  pass  them  covered.  Inside 
the  court  of  the  Palace  of  the  Tsars  stands  the  ancient  Church  of 
the  Saviour  on  the  Cross,  and  here  were  gathered  quite  a  little  crowd 
of  pilgrims — for  this  is  a  very  holy  place — listening  with  intense 
devoutness  to  the  words  of  one  of  their  number,  who,  with  all  the 
fervour  of  an  ancient  Hebrew  prophet,  was  telling,  in  language 
so  picturesque  that  it  seemed  almost  inspired,  the  story  of  a 
miracle  which  had  befallen  him  on  his  travels. 

As  he  was  tramping,  weary  and  footsore,  from  some  distant 
province  to  worship  at  the  shrines  of  Moscow,  the  Blessed  Virgin 
appeared  to  him  on  the  road,  and  bidding  him  to  be  of  good  cheer, 
encouraged  him  to  march  on  to  the  end  of  his  pious  journey.  What 
was  hunger,  what  was  fatigue  in  comparison  with  the  holy  joy 
which  awaited  him  ?  One  envies  the  simple,  unreasoning  faith 
of  these  humble  folk  ;  it  would  be  still  more  enviable  if  it  possessed 
a  stronger  moral  influence  upon  character ;  but,  alas  !  I  have 
already  shown  how  much  too  often  it  comes  to  a  dead  halt  in  the 
realm  of  superstition.  A  little  Awhile  later  in  the  afternoon  I  saw 


296  Memories 

a  pious  pilgrim — pious  he  must  have  been,  or  he  would  not  have 
faced  the  hardships  and  cost  of  the  journey — staggering  dead 
drunk  on  his  return  from  the  shrines  ;  but  even  so  he  did  not  forget 
to  remove  his  cap  as  he  passed  through  the  sacred  Gates  of  the 
Saviour.  Explain  it  who  will,  the  mujik  honestly  and  reverently 
offers  himself  body  and  soul  to  his  God,  and  yet  it  never  occurs 
to  him  that  he  is  defiling  and  degrading  the  gift.  Fancy  a  man 
dragging  through  the  mud  a  rose  which  he  is  to  lay  at  the  feet  of 
his  beloved  ! 

"  Tchto  vam  ugodno  ?  Tchto  vam  ugodno  ?  "  ("  What  d'ye 
lack?  What  d'ye  lack?  ").  The  very  cry  of  the  madcap  city 
'prentices  in  the  "  Fortunes  of  Nigel."  What  a  picture  Sir  Walter 
Scott  would  have  painted  of  the  Gastinnii  Dvor  (the  Strangers' 
Bazaar)  !  Such  a  collection  of  wares  of  all  sorts,  from  a  worn-out 
hearth-brush  of  which  the  last  bristle  has  long  since  departed,  to 
a  diamond  brooch  which,  perhaps,  a  few  nights  before  was  glitter- 
ing on  some  fair  lady's  breast ;  from  the  dirty,  worn-out  kaftan  of 
a  mujik  to  a  ball-dress  of  silk  and  satin.  Such  bargainings,  such 
fights  for  the  last  odd  kopeck.  And  then  the  cajoleries  of  these 
Muscovite  hucksters  !  There  is  something  truly  touching  in  being 
appealed  to  as  "  Golubtchik  "  ("  My  little  dove  ")  in  the  hope  of 
softening  the  hardness  of  one's  heart. 

Altogether  a  wonderful  place,  in  which  were  to  be  found  all  manner 
of  commodities,  some  good,  some  bad,  some  mere  trash,  with  here 
and  there  a  really  valuable  thing,  probably  stolen,  of  the  worth  of 
which  the  dealer  is  profoundly  ignorant,  and  which  he  will  sell 
for  a  song.  In  one  tray  you  may  see  a  whole  jumble  of  odds  and 
ends — keys  without  locks,  locks  without  keys,  brass-headed  nails, 
knife  handles,  glass  beads — and  with  them,  perhaps,  an  old  enamel, 
a  rare  coin,  a  costly  jewel,  rather  astonished  to  find  themselves  in 
such  out-at-elbows  company.  As  a  rule  the  meaner  the  rubbish, 
the  shabbier  the  article,  the  longer  the  battle  over  the  pence. 

If  the  "  little  dove  "  is  firm  he  may  often  fly  away  with  some 
really  precious  bargain.  That,  of  course,  is  a  rare  chance,  but  at 
any  rate  he  will  have  had  a  good  deal  of  fun  for  his  money,  and  a 
sight  of  trade  in  one  of  its  most  picturesque  shapes.  Petticoat 
Lane  is  clean  by  comparison,  but  an  artist  would  find  more  to  draw 


Moscow  297 

here.  There  are  plentiful  opportunities  for  the  etching-needle  of 
a  Rembrandt,  for  the  brush  of  a  Hogarth. 

However  fascinating  may  be  the  street  scenes  in  this  kaleido- 
scope of  a  city,  there  comes  a  moment  when  one  must  eat.  Prince 
Galitzin  had  ordered  luncheon  at  the  Loskutnii  Traktir  (the 
Rubbish-shop  Restaurant),  in  spite  of  its  name  a  very  famous 
eating-house  (the  name,  by  the  bye,  was  well  in  tune  with  the 
market  which  I  have  just  described)  and  the  perfection  of  luxury. 

The  waiters  were  models  ;  they  were  dressed  from  head  to  foot 
in  spotless  white  linen,  changed  twice  a  day.  The  shirt  was  worn 
Russian  fashion,  outside  the  trousers  and  bound  in  at  the  waist 
by  a  girdle.  They  themselves  were  as  clean  as  soap  and  hot  water 
and  steam  baths  could  make  them  ;  so  spick  and  span  and  so 
welcoming  that  it  was  a  pleasure  to  be  served  by  them.  They  most 
persuasively  pressed  each  dish  upon  us,  and  seemed  quite  hurt 
if  our  appetites  could  not  be  of  a  size  with  our  eyes  and  their  wishes. 

The  fare  was  excellent.  A  zakuska  of  raw  salted  salmon  and  the 
greyest  of  caviare — such  caviare  as  you  cannot  procure  even  at  St. 
Petersburg,  for  it  loses  quality  with  every  hour's  journey  from  the 
Volga — a  baby  radish  or  two  and  a  glass  of  liqueur — that  much 
for  an  aperitif;  then  the  serious  business  of  luncheon.  First 
little  patties  of  fish,  jelly  and  eggs,  chopped  very  fine,  served  with 
water  in  which  the  fish  had  been  boiled  for  a  sauce  ;  then  a  stew  of 
sturgeon,  crayfish,  olives,  cucumbers  and  red  toadstools,  quite 
delicious ;  and  for  the  last  a  very  fine  sterlet  d  la  Russe,  as  dainty 
a  dish  as  could  be  laid  before  a  king.  Our  drink  was  lompopo, 
a  cup  made  of  beer,  lemon,  spices  and  a  huge  toast  of  black  bread, 
burned  almost  to  charcoal,  lying  at  the  bottom  of  the  tankard. 
A  glass  of  Chateau  Yquem  and  a  cup  of  the  finest  yellow  tea  (caravan 
tea)  to  top  up  with.  That  was  an  excellent  luncheon,  and 
moreover,  honestly  Muscovite,  quite  in  the  picture. 

Rested  and  refreshed,  we  betook  ourselves  once  more  to  the 
Kremlin,  to  feast  our  eyes  upon  all  those  marvels  which  have 
been  so  well  catalogued  by  Murray  and  by  Baedeker  that  the  mere 
wanderer  may  look  without  feeling  compelled  to  undergo  the 
torments  of  description.  One  thing  struck  me.  Of  Napoleon 
there  are  many  memories,  none  more  significant,  none  more 


298  Memories 

poignant,  here  or  elsewhere  than  the  placing  by  the  Emperor 
Nicholas  of  the  statue  of  the  beaten  Emperor  opposite  to  that  of 
his  conqueror,  Alexander  the  First. 

Gladly  would  I  have  spent  many  days  in  the  old  city — days, 
aye,  and  weeks — for  it  has  a  singular  fascination ;  moreover,  I 
would  have  given  much  to  have  had  some  dealings  with  its  society, 
a  society,  by  all  accounts,  quite  different  from  that  of  Peter's 
capital,  which,  charming,  kindly  and  hospitable  as  it  is,  must  always 
be,  from  its  official  position,  more  or  less  cosmopolitan.  Moscow, 
on  the  other  hand,  is,  or  was  at  that  time,  an  atmosphere — abso- 
lutely itself,  untinged  by  any  modern  desecration  of  conventional 
foreign  manners  and  customs. 

I  know  not  whether  it  be  so  still,  but  in  the  days  of  which  I  am 
writing  one  felt  that  one  was  seeing  the  Russian  boyarin  in  his 
own  home,  just  as  in  Scotland  sixty  years  ago,  before  the  invasion 
of  Americans  and  stockbrokers,  it  was  a  joy  to  visit  a  Highland 
chieftain  in  his  unimproved  ancestral  castle.  There,  again,  was 
an  atmosphere.  But  my  stay  in  Moscow — indeed,  in  Russia — 
was  drawing  to  a  close ;  the  hours  of  one  of  the  holidays  of  my 
life  were  numbered  ;  but  before  going  back  to  the  workaday  world 
I,  too,  must  make  a  pilgrimage.  Should  I  take  scrip  and  staff 
and  bottle,  sew  cockle-shells  on  my  coat — which  would  be  very 
un-Russian — and  start  off  on  my  sandalled  feet  ?  The  train 
leaving  Moscow  at  6.30  a.m.  would  be  better ;  commonplace 
and  modern,  but  convenient. 

One  of  the  greatest  of  Russia's  saints,  held  in  repute  higher 
ihan  most,  is  St.  Sergius.  Many  are  the  wonders  and  miracles 
that  are  recorded  of  him.  Before  he  was  born,  when  his  mother 
received  the  sacrament  his  shouts  of  joy  could  be  heard  all  over 
the  church.  At  his  birth  he  could  recite  the  Ten  Commandments 
and  the  Lord's  Prayer  by  heart.  As  wise  as  he  was  pious,  in  the 
early  part  of  the  fourteenth  century,  he  drew  to  himself  a  great 
following,  and  was  even  an  adviser  of  the  famous  Dmitri  of  the 
Don,  whose  victory  over  the  Tartars  in  the  expedition  undertaken 
by  his  advice  he  announced  to  his  monks  on  the  day  and  at  the 
hour  of  its  occurreuce.  It  was  in  the  year  1330  that  he  founded  his 


Moscow  299 

great  monastery,  the  Troitzkaia  Lavra  (the  Monastery  of  the 
Trinity),  about  forty  miles  from  Moscow,  and  when,  to  the  sorrow 
of  all  men,  he  died  and  was  canonized,  his  own  name  was  added 
to  that  of  his  foundation,  it  became  known  as  the  Troitzkaia 
Sergiefskaia  Lavra,  and  the  fame  of  St.  Sergius  was  established 
for  all  time. 

The  Monks  of  the  Trinity  played  a  great  and  a  noble  part  in  the 
history  of  their  country,  especially  during  the  Polish  war  at  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Frocked  heroes  they  were, 
against  whom  all  the  craft,  the  valour  and  the  money  of  their 
enemies  were  of  no  avail.  The  siege  had  to  be  raised ;  and  when 
after  three  years  the  Russians  rose  against  the  Poles,  who  were  in 
possession  of  Moscow,  after  a  time  of  tribulation  and  misery  untold, 
the  monks  joined  the  forces  of  Minin  and  Pojarski,  and  even  sold 
their  treasures  to  help  in  driving  the  hated  Pole  from  Russian  soil. 
Once  more  they  were  in  vain  besieged  in  1615,  and  it  was  under 
the  impregnable  walls  of  the  convent  which  had  done  such  loyal 
service  to  Russia  that  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Poland  was  signed. 
The  designs  of  the  Poles  had  been  religious  as  well  as  political ; 
had  they  prevailed,  Russia  would  have  fallen  under  the  spiritual 
dominion  of  the  Pope.  So  the  monks  were  warring  for  very 
existence,  and  they  fought  stubbornly. 

Even  Peter  the  Great,  a  scoffer  by  profession,  expressed,  and 
no  doubt  felt,  a  sincere  veneration  for  St.  Sergius.  It  was  a  picture 
of  the  Saint  which  was  carried  with  him  as  his  standard  in  all  his 
battles,  and  sooth  to  say,  Peter  owed  no  small  debt  of  gratitude  to 
the  brave  monks.  His  early  years  were  not  very  rosy.  He  was 
but  ten  years  old  when  his  eldest  brother,  Feodor,  died  childless, 
leaving  the  succession  to  Peter,  to  the  prejudice  of  a  witling  elder 
brother,  Ivan.  Their  sister  Sophia  made  this  the  pretext  for  a 
revolution  to  which  she  excited  the  strelzi  (literally  "archers"),  a 
sort  of  irregular  soldiery,  and  with  their  help  assumed  the  regency. 
In  1789  he  felt  himself  strong  enough  to  call  upon  her  to  resign. 

The  whole  story  forms  an  interesting  episode  in  the  history  of 
the  country,  but  there  is  no  space  to  tell  it  here  ;  I  only  allude  to 
it  because  it  was  in  this  monastery  that  Peter  and  his  poor  weak 
brother  Ivan  found  a  refuge  until,  the  strelzi  turning  round  upon 


300  Memories 

Sophia,  Peter  assumed  the  government  and  she  was  sent  into  a 
convent,  where  she  might  again  weave  plots  to  her  heart's  content. 
So  it  was  gratitude  that  prompted  his  reverence  for  the  Saint  and 
his  monks,  and  as  I  imagine  they  gained  no  small  amount  of  prestige 
from  his  support.  However  that  may  be,  great  is  the  fame  of 
the  place.  It  was  a  festival  of  the  church,  and  though  the  train 
was  pretty  full  at  starting,  we  picked  up  many  worshippers  at 
intermediate  stations,  till  we  were  quite  a  crowd. 

The  Lavra  stands  upon  a  hill,  and  with  its  picturesque  towers 
and  spires  rising  above  its  venerable  battlemented  walls,  looks 
like  an  ancient  feudal  city,  of  which  the  suburbs  are  formed  by  the 
tea-houses,  grog-shops  and  booths  for  the  sale  of  toys  and  sacred 
images  clustered  round  its  base.  Here  the  faithful  congregate 
after  worshipping  at  the  shrines,  and  a  thriving  trade  is  done  in 
refreshments,  chiefly  liquid  and  strong  above  proof,  and  it  must 
be  a  poor  pilgrim  indeed  who  does  not  carry  back  with  him  a  toy 
or  two  as  fairings  for  the  children,  or  an  ikona  for  the  good  wife. 

There  were  several  hundreds  of  men  and  women  toiling  wearily 
up  the  hill  at  the  same  time  as  ourselves.  The  women  were  in 
travelling  outfit,  their  faces  bound  round  with  kerchiefs,  only  the 
nose  and  eyes  showing,  their  short  skirts  reaching  just  below  the 
knee,  and  both  men  and  women  had  their  legs  thickly  swathed 
round  with  linen  bands,  tied  together  with  pieces  of  string,  and 
their  feet  encased  in  shapeless  shoes  contrived  out  of  coarse  matting. 
The  better-to-do  pilgrims  carried  knapsacks,  while  their  less 
fortunate  fellows  had  but  their  staves,  with,  at  most,  a  small  wallet, 
trusting  to  chance  and  charity  for  a  meal  or  a  night's  lodging. 
It  was  a  mixed  crowd,  for  besides  these  humbler  folk  there  were 
prosperous  farmers  and  tradesmen,  whose  telegas  and  carts  were 
standing  outside  the  gates,  making  the  space  look  like  the  halting- 
place  of  a  vast  caravan.  Plutocrats  and  grandees  were  not  want- 
ing, and  the  numberless  beggars  and  cripples  of  whom  we  had  to 
run  the  gauntlet  gathered  a  rich  harvest  of  coppers  and  small 
silver  coins. 

We  entered  the  gates  at  the  same  moment  as  an  old  grey-beard, 
tottering  on  his  staff,  wan  and  weary,  worn  out  with  the  long 
journey  on  foot  from  a  distant  part  of  Russia,  so  feeble  that  nothing 


Moscow  301 

but  the  intoxication  of  fanaticism  could  have  carried  him  on  to 
its  end.  Inside  the  gates  were  more  beggars,  but  these  were 
apparently  collectors  for  the  monastery,  for  I  noticed  that  a 
reverend  brother  was  going  his  rounds  among  them,  peering  into 
the  contents  of  the  little  tin  plates  to  see  that  there  should  be  no 
alienation  of  alms  for  private  purposes.  I  felt  rather  indignant 
at  this,  but  it  occurred  to  me  afterwards  that  the  idea  might  be 
simply  to  pool  all  the  receipts,  that  the  fraternity  of  beggars  might 
all  share  and  share  alike. 

Swiftly  a  serving  brother  laid  hold  of  us ;  he  was  half,  if  not 
wholly,  an  idiot,  and  having  an  impediment  in  his  speech,  promised 
to  be  very  troublesome;  but  a  jolly  little  monk  coming  up  de- 
livered us  from  our  tormentor  and  sent  him  about  his  business. 
He  invited  us  into  his  cell  and  offered  to  act  as  our  cicerone.  His 
humble  home  was  tiny  and  neat  and  scrupulously  clean — one 
might  have  eaten  off  the  floor.  In  one  corner  before  the  ikona 
(sacred  image),  a  little  lamp  was  burning.  His  furniture  con- 
sisted of  a  white  sofa-bed,  two  chairs  and  a  cupboard.  The  little 
window,  on  the  sill  of  which  he  had  the  luxury  of  a  sweet-scented 
verbena  and  a  pot  of  mignonette — one  of  those  touches  of  poetry 
which  make  the  whole  world  akin — looked  out  upon  a  very  pretty 
view  of  the  monastery  garden  fringed  by  the  woods  beyond. 

The  dear  little  man  made  us  very  welcome,  and  gave  us  each  a 
rude  print  of  St.  Sergius  as  a  remembrance  of  the  monk  Vaccian 
and  of  the  Troitzkaia  Lavra.  He  made  me  write  down  his  name 
in  my  pocket-book,  and  then  I  must  write  mine  for  him.  To  my 
amazement,  for  I  had  written  it  in  the  Russian  character,  he  had 
to  spell  it  painfully,  letter  by  letter.  Print  he  could  read  fairly 
well,  and  of  course  the  old  Slavonic  script  of  the  liturgies.  But 
writing,  and  the  reading  of  the  written  character,  were  beyond 
his  capabilities.  Indeed,  during  the  seven  hours  that  I  spent 
with  him  and  his  brethren,  I  was  continually  being  struck  by  the 
proofs  of  the  most  crass  and  darkest  ignorance.  Beyond  the 
four  walls  of  their  convent  they  knew  nothing,  absolutely  nothing, 
One  of  them  asked  me  whether  England  was  not  supplied  with 
gold  by  Russia.  When  I  alluded  to  California  and  Australia, 
they  had  never  heard  of  either.  They  knew  that  there  was  a 


302  Memories 

place  called  America,  and  another  quite  unimportant  place  called 
India,  but  what  they  were,  to  whom  they  belonged,  or  by  whom 
they  were  peopled — that  was  a  blank. 

One's  ideas  of  the  monasteries  of  the  olden  time  were  of  sacred 
institutions  where  in  an  age  of  ignorance  the  holy  fire  of  learning 
was  kept  alight ;  here,  and  apparently  hi  similar  places,  were 
castles  of  indolence,  refuges  to  which  men  might  fly  from  the 
cares  and  duties  of  mankind,  contented  to  be  supplied  with  the 
barest  necessaries  of  life  at  the  public  expense,  adding  thereto 
a  few  scanty  comforts  by  the  kindness  of  some  passing  stranger. 

Every  monk  received  at  the  refectory  one  meal  a  day,  consist- 
ing of  vegetable  soup,  fish,  bread,  vegetables  and  kvass.  If  they 
ate  anything  else  in  the  day  it  must  be  at  their  own  expense.  They 
were  allowed  twenty  roubles  (£3  at  that  time)  a  year  out  of  which 
they  must  clothe  themselves.  Some  had  a  little  something  of 
their  own  wherewith  to  eke  out  this  pittance ;  others  managed 
to  pick  up  a  trifle  now  and  again  as  guides  to  visitors ;  others  had 
nothing.  There  were  in  all  three  hundred  and  fifty  brethren. 
The  admission  to  the  order  was  simple  enough  ;  any  man  was 
eligible  if  only  he  could  show  that  he  had  a  vocation.  The  monks 
had  free  egress  and  ingress,  and  might  even  obtain  a  week's  leave 
of  absence  from  the  Archimandrite.  A  curious,  unproductive 
life.  Such  talents  as  there  might  be  were  hidden  in  napkins  ! 

Of  course  we  visited  all  the  churches  and  shrines ;  but  what 
interested  me  most  were  the  pilgrims.  It  was  impossible  not  to 
be  touched  by  the  very  real  fervour  of  their  piety.  To  see  the 
tears  streaming  down  the  cheeks  of  great  bearded  men  when  they 
kissed  the  face  of  Saint  Sergius,  covered  only  by  a  cloth  of  red 
velvet  and  gold,  made  me  feel  ashamed  of  my  stiff-necked  apathy. 
The  worshippers  moved  me,  the  worshipped  did  not. 

Had  the  French  only  known  what  was  immediately  under  their 
hand  in  1812,  what  prizes  they  might  have  carried  off !  The 
reliquaries  and  vestments,  the  bushels  upon  bushels  of  precious 
stones  and  pearls.  The  treasury  of  the  monastery  must  represent 
a  fabulous  wealth  in  the  offerings  of  Emperors  and  Empresses, 
Princes  and  Princesses,  and  rich  folk  of  lesser  degree. 

One  jewel  was,  if  not  a  miracle,  as  it  is  reputed  to  be,  at  any 


Moscow  303 

rate  a  world's  wonder.  Picture  to  yourself  an  agate  medallion 
mounted  in  huge  diamonds,  the  staining  of  the  agate  representing 
the  figure  of  a  monk  kneeling  in  worship  before  the  crucifix.  Even 
the  eyes  of  the  monk  visible,  two  little  white  specks  in  the  black- 
ness of  the  stone.  I  held  this  wonder  in  my  hand  and  examined 
it  as  closely  as  I  could ;  but  in  vain  did  I  try  to  discover  any  trace 
of  possible  fraud.  I  have  seen  and  read  of  many  freaks  of  nature ; 
none  of  its  kind,  I  think,  so  strange  as  this. 

There  was  much  to  be  seen  in  the  Lavra — the  refectory  of  the 
monks,  their  carefully-tended  garden,  and  above  all  the  grand 
old  battlements,  twenty-one  feet  broad,  from  which  we  could 
look  down  on  the  surrounding  country  and  see  the  advancing 
hordes  of  Poles,  hear  the  war  cries  of  assailants  and  besieged, 
listen  to  the  din  of  battle  and  to  the  triumphant  hymns  of  the 
cowled  warriors  giving  glory  to  God  for  the  victory. 

But  we  had  more  ground  to  cover,  so  after  a  visit  to  a  neigh- 
bouring traktir,  where  brother  Vaccian  made  himself  exceedingly 
comfortable,  we  drove  off  with  him  to  a  most  curious  hermitage, 
or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  monastery,  about  four  versts  off 
—religion  hi  its  most  repellent  shape.  The  church  and  cells  are 
underground,  so  we  bought  tapers  to  light  us  down  the  dark,  slimy 
steps.  How  can  men  inhabit  such  dens  ?  How  can  men  think 
that  hi  so  doing  they  are  pleasing  the  God  who  has  given  them 
the  pure  air  and  the  canopy  of  heaven.  To  me  it  seemed  a  sacri- 
lege. I  went  into  one  of  the  empty  cells  and  measured  it — nine 
feet  by  six ;  only  hi  the  centre  was  the  vaulted  roof  high  enough 
for  me  to  stand  with  my  hat  on.  All  the  furniture  a  stove,  a 
pallet  and  an  ikona ;  the  only  ornament  a  black  cross  painted  on 
the  roof.  The  water  was  literally  streaming  down  the  walls. 

In  such  a  den  as  this  fanatics  will  live  for  years  without  the 
light  of  day  and  without  air ;  their  only  communication  with  the 
outer  world  is  by  means  of  the  serving  brother  who  brings  their 
food  and  cleans  (save  the  mark  !)  their  cells.  Their  days  are 
passed  in  contemplation,  and  in  reading  the  lives  of  the  saints 
by  the  dim  light  of  a  taper.  The  liturgies  of  the  Church  they 
only  hear  through  a  tiny  window,  like  the  lepers'  squints  in  our 
own  country,  which  during  Mass  is  thrown  open  to  the  church 


304  Memories 

that  the  cells  surround.  I  asked  if  these  holy  men  received  visitors, 
as  I  should  have  liked  to  have  had  some  talk  with  them,  but  I 
was  told  that  they  only  received  the  Emperor,  the  Empress  and 
the  Metropolitan.  If  they  must  have  company,  apparently  it 
has  to  be  of  the  very  best. 

How  sweet  the  pine  woods  smelt  in  the  soft,  delicious  air  of 
spring  after  these  noisome  holes  at  which  a  well-conditioned  toad 
would  turn  up  his  nose  !  There  was  more  to  be  done  yet,  for  the 
place  seemed  to  be  a  perfect  colony  of  Holiness.  At  a  little  dis- 
tance there  dwelt  an  old  monk,  who  after  ten  years  spent  in  one 
of  those  hideous  cells  (ten  years  !  it  makes  one  shudder  to  think 
of  it !)  had  reached  such  a  pinnacle  of  piety  that  he  was  now 
accredited  by  the  wondering  mujiks  with  the  power  of  performing 
miracles.  He  was  not  a  very  old  man,  as  we  were  told,  but  so 
broken  down  with  infirmity,  bred  rather  of  privations  than  of 
years,  that  he  could  hardly  raise  himself  on  his  couch  to  receive 
us.  Strikingly  handsome,  and  of  rare  distinction,  with  long 
grizzly  hair  and  beard,  he  was  the  ideal  of  St.  Jerome.  He  was 
not  unwilling  to  talk;  but  his  mind  was  wandering,  his  speech 
incoherent,  and  he  seemed  relieved  when  I  bade  him  farewell. 

I  was  afraid  that  if  I  offered  any  little  gift  to  so  saintly  a  person- 
age he  would  be  affronted,  so  on  leaving  I  put  a  trifle  in  the  hand 
of  the  attendant  who  kept  the  pretty  little  cottage.  He  begged 
me  to  go  back  and  lay  it  on  the  hermit's  table.  He  was  lying 
back  apparently  exhausted,  but  at  the  sight  of  the  silver  he  revived, 
and  gave  every  sign  of  pleasure  and  gratitude. 

Close  by  is  one  of  those  austere  monasteries  into  which  no  female 
may  enter ;  but  we  had  seen  enough,  so  we  drove  back  to  the 
Lavra,  there  to  await  the  train  which  should  carry  us  back  to 
Moscow.  By  this  time  a  good  many  of  the  pilgrims  who  were 
merrymaking  among  the  booths  outside  the  walls  were  very  drunk 
indeed.  They  had  washed  down  their  piety  with  vodka,  and 
when  the  effects  of  that  should  have  passed  off,  would  be  ready 
once  more  to  face  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  with  that 
added  reputation  for  holiness  which  is  the  privilege  of  the  Hadji 
in  every  land. 

It  had  been  a  full  and  an  interesting  day,  to  the  pleasure  of  which 


Moscow  3°5 

our  good  little  monk  Vaccian  had  contributed  not  a  little ;  but 
I  could  have  wished  that  when  I  said  good-bye,  leaving  with  him 
the  wherewithal  to  buy  a  few  little  comforts,  he  had  not  hi  the 
profusion  of  his  gratitude  insisted  on  kissing  as  well  as  blessing 
me,  for  indeed  his  person  was  not  kept  with  the  same  scrupulous 
cleanliness  as  his  cell.  The  blessing  was  good  ;  the  kissing  less  so  ; 
but  it  had  to  be  endured,  so  I  tried  not  to  make  a  wry  face  over  it. 

The  next  day  was  the  last  of  my  delightful  stay  at  Moscow. 
Dreamily  I  wandered  alone  through  the  streets,  a  purposeless 
vagabond,  and  rather  mournful,  for  I  would  fain  have  remained 
much  longer.  I  carefully  eschewed  sightseeing,  for  I  was  anxious 
to  fix  on  my  mind  what  I  had  already  seen,  and  that  could  best 
be  achieved  by  gathering  a  general  impression  of  the  peculiar 
features  of  the  city. 

On  the  24th  of  May  I  reached  St.  Petersburg  and  almost  imme- 
diately left  for  London.  I  brought  away  with  me  a  store  of  happy 
memories,  especially  the  cherished  remembrance  of  Lord  and 
Lady  Napier.  Of  Russia  I  felt  as  if  I  must  take  my  leave,  full  of 
gratitude  for  boundless  hospitality  and  kindness,  hi  her  own 
pretty  formula  "  Forgive  !  " 

Many  years  after  the  betrayal  of  Denmark,  when  I  was  Secre- 
tary of  the  Office  of  Works,  I  was  once  more,  to  my  great  delight, 
associated  officially  with  my  old  chief.  Mr.  Nelson,  the  famous 
Edinburgh  publisher,  had  very  generously  offered  to  pay  the  cost 
of  certain  improvements  and  restorations  at  Edinburgh  Castle. 
Lord  Napier  and  I  were  appointed  members  of  a  committee  to 
consider  the  plans  and  proposals.  One  fine  afternoon,  after  the 
meeting  of  the  committee,  we  were  walking  down  the  hill  together, 
when  we  began  talking  of  the  old  St.  Petersburg  days.  He  was 
full  of  fun  and  merriment,  laughing  over  the  old  memories.  At 
last  I  said : 

"  Do  you  remember  that  dismal  night  in  February,  1864,  when 
you  sent  for  me  to  decipher  the  telegram  that  decided  the  fate  of 
Denmark  ?  " 

'  Yes,  indeed,"  was  the  answer. 

"  And  do  you  remember  your  journey  to  Tsarskoe  Selo  the  next 
morning  and  what  Prince  Gortchakoff  said  to  you." 

VOL.  i  20 


306  Memories 

"  No,"  said  Lord  Napier,  "  I  don't  remember  that,"  with  a 
strong  emphasis  on  the  that — but  there  came  into  his  eyes  the  old 
merry  twinkle  that  I  loved  to  see.  He  would  not  give  away  Lord 
Russell,  whom  he  loved,  even  to  me  who  knew  the  whole  story, 
but  the  laughter  hi  his  tell-tale  eyes  spoke  volumes.  Nobody 
suffered  more  than  Lord  Napier  occasionally  did  from  the  diplo- 
matic vagaries  of  his  old  chief.  But  I  think  that  he  looked  upon 
him  as  a  sort  of  superlunary  political  saint,  not  to  be  measured 
by  the  standards  applicable  to  the  ordinary  commonplace  Secre- 
tary of  State. 

On  my  way  home  I  stopped  at  Berlin,  which  was  in  a  fever  of 
excitement  and  self-glorification.  Two  of  the  most  formidable 
military  Powers  of  Europe,  having  joined  forces,  had  succeeded 
in  crushing  little  Denmark.  Prussia  was  triumphant,  the  Mark 
beside  itself  with  martial  elation.  Trophies  of  war  were  stacked 
in  public  places,  poor  little  old-fashioned  smooth-bore  cannons, 
not  much  better  than  toys,  which  had  been  all  that  the  brave 
Danes  had  had  for  the  defence  of  their  Dannewerke.  The  officers, 
"  unscarred  braggarts,"  who  had  fought  (save  the  word  !)  hi  this 
noble  warfare  each  wore  a  white  silk  band  round  the  sleeve  of 
his  tunic,  rattling  his  sabre  with  all  the  conscious  pride  of  heroism, 
while  the  fair-haired  maidens  fell  down  in  worship  before  the 
majesty  of  the  War  God.  Surely  since  the  world  began  there 
never  was  so  much  cry  over  such  a  paltry  ploc  of  wool.  But  your 
Prussian  Junker  can  outboast  creation  ! 

Two  more  days,  and  then  back  to  the  Foreign  Office. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

1864 

THE    FIRST    CALL    OF    THE    EAST 

THE  year  1864  is  sacred  to  me  in  that,  although  it  called  me 
away  from  St.  Petersburg,  where  I  was  so  happy,  it  also 
called  me  to  my  first  taste — a  mere  glimpse — of  that  East  which, 
old  man  as  I  am,  still  casts  its  spell  over  me.  When  the  time  came 
for  my  holiday — not  till  October — I  had  six  weeks  before  me  which 
I  could  call  my  own.  It  happened  that  at  that  moment  a  messenger 
was  wanted  for  Constantinople ;  I  saw  my  chance  and  volunteered. 
Vienna  first,  then  down  the  Danube  to  the  Black  Sea.  Mr.  (after- 
wards Sir  Arthur)  Cowell  Stepney  was  my  companion.  A  wonderful 
journey,  where  language  and  costume  carry  the  traveller  back  to 
the  days  of  Trajan,  and  the  very  names  of  the  places  are  full  of 
romance.  "  Unde  es,  amice  ?  "  asks  a  Wallach,  recognizing  a 
friend — and  invites  him  to  sit  at  the  same  "  mensa  "  (not  "  tavola  " 
or  "table  ")  with  him,  and  rates  the  waiter  because  the  cloth  is  not 
as  "  albo  "  (not  "  blanc  "  or  "  bianco  ")  as  it  should  be.  The 
peasants,  shaggy,  bearded  and  untrimmed,  were  dressed  in  tunics, 
fur  caps,  leggings  and  sandals,  exactly  like  the  prisoners  on  Trajan's 
arch.  Fifty  years  ago  the  Latinity  had  been  preserved  in  far 
greater  purity  in  Wallachia  than  in  the  true  Latin  countries,  and 
poverty  of  communication  had  prevented  the  demon  of  fashion 
from  destroying  the  old  picturesque  national  costume. 

A    troglodyte  colony  of  Circassians  at    Czernavoda,  burrowing 

in  the  earth  like  rabbits,  a  colony  of  Tartars  herded  in  a  loathsome 

mud  town,  the  gift  of  the  Sultan  to  the  Crim  Tartars,  seemed  like 

creatures  from  another  hemisphere.     Here  we  had  some  trouble 

VOL.  i  307  20* 


308  Memories 

with  certain  tatterdemalion  nondescripts  who  represented  the 
Turkish  authorities.  They  wanted  to  open  my  Foreign  Office  bags. 
I  rebelled  ;  but  knowing  no  Turkish,  and  they  being  equally  igno- 
rant of  any  other  language,  the  case  seemed  hopeless,  when  all  of 
a  sudden  I  remembered  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe.  Kinglake 
furnished  me  with  the  word  of  salvation.  "  Eltchi,  Eltchi !  "  I 
shouted,  "  touch  my  bags  if  you  dare,  you  infernal  scoundrels  !  " 
The  last  words,  except  as  ornaments,  were  pleonastic  as  abuse 
generally  is.  "  Sesame  "  itself  had  not  more  magic  than  the  first. 
My  canvas  bags  became  an  object  of  veneration — the  great  seal 
as  sacred  as  that  of  King  Solomon  in  the  days  of  his  glory. 

At  Kustendji  we  took  ship,  and  after  a  stormy  passage  in  that 
cruel  sea  the  name  of  which  had  to  be  changed  in  order  to  propi- 
tiate its  evil  demons,  made  our  way,  like  Jason  and  his  Argonauts, 
through  the  Kuaneai  Symplegades,  the  dark,  floating  rocks  between 
which  the  very  dove  that  they  sent  out  as  pioneer  lost  her  tail,  and 
found  ourselves  in  the  Bosphorus,  the  identical  bull's  ferry  across 
which  that  wicked  old  god  Zeus  carried  the  lovely  Europa.  We  were 
now  in  the  midst  of  the  scenes  made  famous  by  Homer  and  Hesiod  ; 
the  home  of  gods  and  heroes,  the  land  in  which  all  the  poetry  and 
all  the  romance  of  the  Western  world  was  born. 

Beautiful  is  Constantinople,  the  great  city  of  palaces,  mosques, 
minarets  and  cypresses  ;  but  how  much  more  beautiful  must  that 
paradise  have  been  under  the  dispensation  of  Olympus,  before  the 
unspeakable  Turk,  and  the  hardly  more  speakable  Christian  of  those 
parts,  had  made  it  the  centre  of  their  ignoble  tussles,  intrigues, 
cruelties,  robberies  and  murders  ! 

The  day  had  not  long  broken  when  on  a  dismal  morning — October 
4th — we  escaped  from  a  polychrome  and  polyglot  crowd  which 
besieged  our  ship,  and  following  our  luggage  borne  by  sturdy  Hamals, 
made  our  way  through  mud  and  slosh  up  the  Grande  Rue  de  Pera 
to  Misseri's  Hotel.  There  was  a  magic  in  the  name,  for  had  not 
old  Misseri  been  made  famous  by  Kinglake  ?  Was  he  not,  longo 
intervallo,  the  second  hero  of  that  immortal  book  "  Eothen  ?  " 
And  was  he  not  himself  grown  rich  and  fat  and  well-liking,  a  Pasha 
of  many  tales,  and  all  of  them  in  honour  of  his  old  master,  whom  he 
loved,  and  whom  I  was  only  to  know  many  years  later  ? 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  3°9 

When  I  had  ridden  to  Therapia  and  deposited  my  bags  at  the 
British  Embassy,  where  Mr.  William  Stuart  was  then  the  Ambassa- 
dor's vicegerent,  I  went  back  to  Constantinople.  Stuart  was  an 
excellent  official,  famous  for  having  penetrated  all  those  arcana 
of  cookery  in  which  Brillat  Savarin  himself  was  not  a  greater  adept. 
It  is  a  study  well  worth  the  attention  of  diplomatists,  for  who  can 
say  what  difficulties  an  excellent  dinner  has  not  smoothed  over  ? 
And  here  let  me,  in  passing,  pay  a  tribute  to  my  greatest  living 
friend  among  British  Ambassadors,  the  prince  of  modern  diploma- 
tists and  experts  in  dining  as  a  fine  art.  But  I  will  say  no  more, 
lest  I  should  be  suspected  of  fishing  for  an  invitation — if  only  a  sea 
which  I  am  never  likely  again  to  cross  did  not  lie  between  him  and 
me  that  might  be  possible ;  as  it  is,  I  can  meet  accusation  with 
firmness. 

Of  course  we  went  to  see  all  the  sights  of  Stamboul — non  ragionam 
di  lor.  What  delighted  me  far  more  than  the  mosques,  the  dancing 
and  howling  dervishes,  the  tombs  of  magnificent  Sultans,  and  all 
the  stock-in-trade  of  the  dragoman,  was  wandering  through  by- 
ways in  the  city,  happening  upon  out-of-the-way,  unsuspected, 
picturesque  nooks  and  corners — above  all,  certain  old  graveyards, 
with  their  quaint  turbaned  memorial  stones,  over  which  the  tall, 
solemn  cypresses  mount  reverent  guard — warders  watching  over  • 
the  peace  of  the  dead  Moslem.  There  was  one  such  cemetery  hard 
by  a  tiny  mosque,  on  one  side  of  which  the  jealously  latticed  window 
of  a  harem  looked  out,  and  I  could  picture  to  myself  Amina  the 
ghoul,  stealing  out  of  her  prison  in  the  dark  hours  of  the  night  to 
practise  her  unholy  rites  among  the  mouldering  dead.  There  were 
still  places  in  Constantinople  where,  far  from  the  madding  crowd  of 
frock-coated  modernity,  the  glamour  of  the  East  retained  its 
power. 

One  sight  I  am  glad  to  have  seen,  and  that  was  on  Friday,  the 
yth  of  October,  the  Sultan  Abdul  Aziz  going  to  the  mosque.  There 
was  a  great  crowd  of  carriages  full  of  ladies,  and  all  the  principal 
ministers  and  officers  of  State.  The  Sultan  looked  tired  and  in- 
tensely bored,  as  well  he  might,  for  already  his  extravagances  had 
brought  upon  him  ceaseless  remonstrances  from  the  other  Powers. 
He  began  his  reign  well,  industriously  paving  the  road  to  Hell, 


Memories 


but  his  paving-stones,  excellent  as  they  seemed  to  be,  soon  crumbled 
into  dust.  He  became  inoculated  with  the  barbarous  lust  of 
military  splendour  and  all  those  whims  and  appetites  to  which 
Sultans  have  fallen  victims  to  the  undoing  of  themselves  and  their 
people. 

The  sorry  end  came  twelve  years  later  (in  1876).  How  it 
came  about  remains  a  mystery  of  the  women's  quarters.  It  was 
said  at  the  time  that  a  nip  from  a  pair  of  sharp  scissors  opened  a 
vein  and  the  wretched  man  bled  to  death  in  the  privacy  of  his  own 
harem.  Who  did  the  deed  none  knew.  Was  it  suicide  ?  Was  it 
a  bribed  eunuch  ?  Was  it  one  of  the  ladies  ?  That  is  immaterial  ; 
his  death  was  needed,  and  he  died. 

Three  notable  men  were  among  the  high  officials  in  waiting  : 
Aali  Pasha,  who  was  said  to  be  greatly  under  the  influence  of 
M.  de  Moustiers,  the  French  Ambassador  ;  Omar  Pasha,  the  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  the  Turkish  army  in  the  Crimea  in  1855  ;  and 
Fuad  Pasha,  who  had  been  Lord  Dufferin's  colleague  on  the  com- 
mission which  investigaged  the  anti-Christian  uprising  in  the 
Lebanon  in  1860.  I  was  glad  to  see  him,  for  I  had  heard  so  much 
of  him  from  Meade,  who  accompanied  Lord  Dufferin  as  secretary. 
That  was  Lord  Dufferin's  first  important  mission  ;  and  very  well 
he  managed  it. 

When  he  first  took  his  seat  with  the  colleagues,  his  extremely 
youthful  appearance  made  them  think  that  they  would  be  able  to 
do  what  they  pleased  with  him  ;  they  were  mistaken  ;  by  the  third 
sitting  his  cleverness  and  tact,  combined  with  the  most  exquisite 
manners  and  firmness,  had  made  him  master  of  the  situation,  and  his 
fame  as  a  diplomatist  was  secured. 

Fuad  Pasha,  like  my  old  friend  Khalil  Pasha  at  St.  Petersburg, 
was  noted  as  a  wit.  A  short  time  before  I  saw  him  he  gave  a 
ball  to  which  the  members  of  the  Corps  Diplomatique  and  their 
wives  were  invited.  At  a  certain  moment  it  was  arranged  that 
the  ladies  should  go  and  pay  a  visit  to  Madame  Fuad  in  the  harem. 
A  pert  French  charge  d'affaires  said  that  he  should  manage  to 
smuggle  himself  inside  the  mystic  doors.  Fired  with  this  ambi- 
tion, at  the  given  time  he  offered  his  arm  to  one  of  the  ladies  and 
tried  to  slip  in  with  her.  Fuad  Pasha,  who  was  standing  by 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  311 

stopped  him,  saying  very  quietly,  "  Pardon,  mon  cher,  vous  savez 
que  vous  n'etes  accredite  qu'aupres  de  la  Porte." 

But  after  all,  Constantinople,  with  its  vaunted  charms — charms 
so  much  vaunted  that  they  have  become  almost  familiar — was  not 
the  goal  of  our  ambition.  Our  aim  was  to  see  something  of  Asia 
Minor  and,  above  all,  to  explore  the  Trojan  Plain.  The  difficulty 
was,  how  to  get  there  ?  At  last  we  heard  of  a  Russian  steamer, 
the  Grand  Duke  Constantino,  plying  between  Odessa  and  Alexandria 
— a  craft  as  capricious  as  a  fine  lady.  First  she  would,  and  then  she 
wouldn't,  take  us,  and  finally,  "  saying  '  no,'  consented."  But  not 
for  two  days  would  she  make  up  her  mind  to  start.  At  last,  on  the 
I2th  of  October,  we  steamed  away  from  the  Golden  Horn,  leaving 
behind  us  the  domes  and  minarets  of  Stamboul  bathed  in  all  the 
glory  of  a  sunset  that  would  have  made  Turner  wild  with  delight, 
and  which  sent  a  whole  shipload  of  Russian  pilgrims  bound  for 
the  Holy  Land  to  their  knees,  piously  crossing  themselves  at  the 
last  sight  of  St.  Sophia,  always  a  sacred  shrine  to  the  orthodox, 
in  spite  of  having  been  for  centuries  defiled  by  the  rites  of  Islam. 

On  the  following  morning  we  landed  at  the  Dardanelles.  The 
Consul  was  most  kind,  and  helped  us  in  every  way.  The  trouble  was 
that  there  were  no  horses  to  be  had,  so  we  spent  a  wet,  stormy  day 
in  visiting  the  civil  and  military  governors.  The  former  was  a 
delightful,  fat  old  gentleman,  brother-in-law  to  Fuad  Pasha,  with  a 
very  merry  twinkle  in  his  eye,  almost  as  entertaining  as  Kinglake's 
immortal  Pasha,  whose  conversation  is  recorded  in  "  Eothen." 
He  spoke  much  about  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  declared  that  the 
Princess  was  "  a  gift  of  cream  and  honey  specially  sent  by  Allah 
for  the  good  of  the  English  people."  Those  were  the  sentiments 
of  the  man  of  peace. 

The  man  of  war  was  not  less  emphatic  over  the  pipes  and  coffee. 
He  professed  great  admiration  for  Lord  Palmerston,  Lord  Stratford 
de  Redcliffe,  and  the  bagpipes.  If  ever  England  should  be  in  trouble 
Turkey  would  come  to  the  rescue,  with  four  hundred  thousand  men, 
and  he  would  be  the  man  to  lead  them.  But  alas  !  that  was  fifty- 
one  years  ago,  in  pre-Enver  days  !  What  was  perhaps  more  to  the 
purpose,  by  the  help  of  the  two  governors  we  procured  horses  and  a 
kavass  named  Hussein,  a  picturesque  warrior  bristling  with  arms, 


3 1 2  Memories 

who  was  made  personally  responsible  for  our  safety.  The  good 
Misseri  had  found  us  an  excellent  dragoman  at  Constantinople. 
I  recommended  him  afterwards  to  Leighton — not  yet  President  of 
the  Royal  Academy — who  was  delighted  with  him. 

Full  of  enthusiasm,  the  old  poem  stirring  us  to  the  very  core, 
we  wandered,  Homer  in  hand,  among  the  scenes  made  sacred  for 
ever  by  the  tale  of  the  ten  years'  siege.  We  looked  out — as  the 
homesick  Greeks  did — upon  Imbros,  Tenedos,  Lemnos,  Samothrace, 
and  dimly  saw  far-away  Athos  ;  ahead  of  us  was  the  glorious  Ida 
range.  Hardly  a  step  could  we  take  without  treading  upon  broken 
marble  and  sherds  of  pottery,  dumb  witnesses  of  the  vanished 
existence  of  a  once  teeming  population,  or  probably  three  tiers  of 
population — the  men  of  King  Priam's  time,  the  Romans,  the 
Genoese.  All  have  left  their  traces,  all  are  now  forgotten  by  the 
few  poverty-stricken  Turkish  villagers  who  have  ignorantly 
succeeded  to  their  heritage. 

The  Scamander,  long  since  diverted  from  its  old  course,  was 
peaceful  enough  when  we  first  crossed  it ;  but  there  came  a  great 
storm,  the  God  descended  into  the  river,  and  in  a  couple  of  hours 
the  sluggish  stream  had  become  a  wild,  tearing  flood  ;  to  get  back 
was  out  of  the  question,  and  we  had  to  take  refuge  for  the  night  in 
a  Turkish  farm-house,  a  very  filthy  haven  of  rest,  or  rather  no-rest, 
where  we  were  the  prey  of  creeping  and  hopping  creatures  innumer- 
able. In  the  dead  of  the  night  the  wind  howled,  the  crazy  house 
shook,  and  a  portion  of  the  ceiling  plaster  fell  upon  me,  and  began, 
as  it  seemed,  to  take  unto  itself  legs  and  crawl  all  over  me.  Furious 
as  the  weather  was,  I  jumped  up  and  fled  into  an  outside  shed,  where, 
after  a  bath  by  moonlight  in  Scamander,  I  waited  for  the  dawn, 
which  came  at  last,  breaking  into  a  glorious  day,  its  beauty  enhanced 
a  hundredfold  by  the  memory  of  the  horrors  of  the  night. 

As  we  sauntered  over  the  hallowed  plain,  it  needed  no  great  play 
of  the  imagination  to  see  the  Grecian  ships  drawn  up  in  line  by  the 
seashore ;  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  hosts  of  Europe  and  Asia 
facing  one  another  in  battle  array  ;  to  listen  to  the  proud  challenges 
of  the  leaders  acclaimed  by  the  shouts  of  their  men  ;  Ajax,  "  like 
the  dread  Ares  in  person,  striding  mightily,  in  his  harness  of  flashing 
brass,  shaking  his  long  shafted  spear ;  "  to  see  the  body  of  Hector 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  313 

being  dragged  in  cruel  revenge  round  yonder  barrow,  which  is  the 
tomb  of  Patroclus  ;  to  feel  with  the  aged  King  Priam,  praying  for 
the  ransom  of  his  son's  remains  ;  to  mourn  over  the  widowhood  of 
Andromache  !  These  are  the  very  springs  near  which  Hector  was 
killed,  still  pouring  their  runlets  of  water  into  the  natural  basin 
at  which  the  deep-bosomed  Trojan  women  were  wont  to  wash  their 
linen. 

It  is  good  to  remember  those  days  spent  amid  traditions  which 
three  thousand  years  have  not  sufficed  to  strip  of  their  glamour. 
If  the  plain  still  seemed  to  ring  with  the  clash  of  arms,  the  slopes 
and  wooded  dells  of  "  many  fountained  "  Ida  were  so  lovely,  so 
full  of  poetry,  that  I  half  expected  to  see  them  peopled  by  lovely 
goddesses  and  shy  dryads,  hiding  among  the  oaks  and  chestnuts 
and  pines.  But  alas  !  Aphrodite,  the  Queen  of  Smiles  (was  she 
not  born  in  the  foam  of  the  countless  smiles  of  the  sea  ?),  has  long 
since  forsaken  the  haunts  that  she  loved  when  the  world  was  young 
— maybe  the  men  of  to-day  are  not  so  attractive  as  Anchises  and 
Adonis,  or  as  the  lovely  boy  who  drew  down  the  chaste  Artemi? 
from  her  crescent  in  high  heaven  to  steal  a  kiss  on  earth.  The 
goddesses  remain  sedate  and  unkissing  among  the  clouds  of 
Olympus,  and  no  longer  condescend  to  entrance  the  solitudes  of 
shepherds,  nor  plead  for  the  palm  of  beauty  before  a  mortal  judge. 
But  if  the  goddesses  have  fled  for  ever,  the  sacred  groves  which 
they  loved  still  remain  full  of  the  magic  of  their  beauty  and  of 
the  olden  time.  It  is  only  we  who  are  unworthy  to  receive  the 
divine  afflatus — we  degenerate — of  the  earth,  earthy. 

That  Homer  was  himself  and  not  a  limited  liability  company 
of  ballad-mongers — that  he,  too,  wandered  where  we  did — is  proved 
by  his  accurate  picture  of  the  landscape  of  the  Troad.  Kinglake 
brings  forward  the  relative  positions  of  Imbros  and  Samothrace. 
Poseidon  viewed  the  war  from  Samothrace,  but  on  the  map  Imbros 
stands  between  it  and  the  Asiatic  shore.  How  was  the  god's 
vision  not  masked  ?  Then  Kinglake  looked,  and  saw  that  Samo- 
thrace towered  high  above  Imbros,  so  that  Poseidon  had  well 
chosen  his  watch-tower.  Ida  gives  what  I  think  is  a  still  better 
proof  that  Homer  saw — and  described  what  he  saw.  He  could 
not  have  been  born  blind. 


314  Memories 

Climbing  Mount  Ida,  at  first  we  rode  through  an  enchanted 
forest,  broken  up  by  glades  and  pastures  of  rarest  beauty,  watered 
by  crystal  rills  springing  from  the  living  rock,  and  babbling  their 
way  down  to  the  plain,  to  join  Scamander,  through  scenes  befitting 
the  divine  mysteries  sung  by  the  poets.  Higher  up  the  vegetation 
becomes  less  luxuriant  and  more  stern,  until  it  dwindles  into  mere 
scrub  and  finally  ceases  altogether.  Then  comes  a  stiff  ascent 
over  loose  shingle,  up  which  we  had  to  drag  our  horses,  slipping 
back  a  yard  for  every  two  yards  gained.  The  stones  are  bare  and 
almost  polished,  scarcely  so  much  as  a  lichen  to  be  seen,  but  when 
at  last  we  painfully  reached  the  top  of  Gargarus,  there  burst  upon 
our  view  a  carpet  of  brilliant  wild  flowers,  marking  the  spot  where 
Here  lulled  to  sleep  the  mighty  Zeus  as  he  sat  brooding  over  the 
help  to  be  given  to  Hector  and  to  Troy.  It  was  a  war  in  which 
the  gods  themselves  took  sides,  and  fought  and  schemed  on  behalf 
of  those  whom  they  took  under  their  wings. 

Does  not  Homer  tell  us  how,  when  Poseidon  was  helping  the 
Greeks,  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  the  Lady  Here,  who  was  also  on 
their  side,  saw  her  lord  Zeus  grimly  watching  from  the  heights 
of  Ida  over  the  Trojan  host  ?  How  to  close  his  eyes  and  gain 
time  ?  The  God  of  Sleep  she  suborns  by  promising  to  give  him 
as  his  bride  the  beloved  of  his  heart,  the  youngest  of  the  Graces, 
fair  Pasithae.  The  Goddess  is  Queen  of  all  Majesty,  yet  she  has 
but  too  good  reason  to  know  that  Majesty  by  itself  has  lost  its 
power  over  the  Cloud-compeller  ;  so  she  begs  of  Aphrodite  the  loan 
of  her  cestus,  the  magic  girdle  which  holds  the  secret  of  all  those 
alluring  charms  which  make  love  irresistible.  Armed  with  this 
and  having  Sleep  as  her  ally,  she  seeks  her  lord,  and  with  sweet 
dalliance  beguiles  him  into  oblivion  on  the  mountain-top. 

"  Then  the  divine  earth  sent  up  a  carpet  thick  and  soft  of  newly- 
budding  grass,  dew-sprinkled  lotos,  crocus  and  hyacinth  "  (Iliad, 
XIV.).  Homer  must  have  seen  this  wonder  and  invented  the 
pretty  fable  of  Here's  wiles  to  account  for  this  unexpected  garden 
of  wildings. 

To  deny  Homer  or  Shakespeare  is  a  crime  of  high  treason  against 
the  Majesty  of  Genius.  For  my  part,  in  these  days  of  acute 
criticism,  when  all  faith  is  shattered  and  torn  to  shreds,  I  am  not 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  315 

ashamed  to  confess  that  I  am  yet  old-fashioned  enough  to  believe 
in  Homer,  and  to  love  the  old  fables  of  the  gods  and  goddesses, 
call  them  sun-myths  or  moon-myths,  or  what  you  will.  To  me 
Agamemnon,  Achilles  and  Ajax ;  Priam,  Hector,  Andromache, 
Paris  and  dear,  beautiful,  naughty  Helen,  teterrima  belli  causa, 
are  still  real  actors  on  the  world's  stage,  who  among  these  glades 
and  forests  and  sweetly  watered  dells  and  plains  played  their 
parts  in  a  great  drama  which  has  been  the  joy  of  countless  genera- 
tions and  will  be  the  joy  of  generations  that  are  yet  to  come.  Of 
how  much  pleasure  and  beauty  does  not  too  much  learning  rob 
us  !  Is  it  not  enough  that  a  thing  is  beautiful  ?  Why  turn  dia- 
monds into  charcoal  ?  If  we  might  reverse  the  process  there 
would  be  some  sense  in  it. 

At  a  pass  on  the  top  of  a  spur  of  the  mountain  range  we  came 
upon  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  eight-hours'  system.  At  a 
point  where  caravans  cross  the  mountain  there  was  a  little  hut 
with  a  tiny  vegetable  garden.  It  was  occupied  by  three  Zebecs, 
guardians  of  the  peace,  and  in  some  fashion  customs  officers.  They 
divided  the  twenty-four  hours  between  them.  While  one  slept, 
another  mounted  guard,  and  the  third  robbed  any  unarmed 
travellers  who  might  pass  that  way.  We  had  luncheon  in  their 
hut ;  the  coffee  and  cigarettes  were  of  the  best — manifestly  the 
spoils  of  the  Egyptian.  Refreshed  and  enriched  with  a  store  of 
happy  memories,  we  came  down  upon  the  Bay  of  Adramyttium. 
The  richly  wooded  gorges  of  the  southern  slope  of  the  mountain 
were,  if  possible,  even  more  beautiful  than  the  Trojan  side.  We 
slept  at  Ardjelar,  and  next  day  took  boat  to  Assos. 

We  had  now  left  the  enchanted  haunts  of  gods  and  goddesses, 
the  battlefields  of  heroes,  to  linger  for  a  while  in  the  footsteps  of 
the  Holy  Apostles.  The  Military  Pasha  at  the  Dardanelles  had 
given  us  a  letter  for  the  Bimbashi  in  command,  who  was  very 
civil  and  showed  us  over  the  ruins  of  the  old  Greek  town,  then  said 
to  be  the  most  perfect  in  existence,  but  even  fifty-one  years  ago 
fast  disappearing  under  the  hand  of  the  destroyer,  who  must  needs 
carry  off  the  grand  old  masonry  to  build  fortifications.  The 
Bimbashi  was  wrecking  the  old  town  with  ardour,  for  our  friend 
the  Pasha  had  written  him  an  indignant  despatch  complaining 


3 1 6  Memories 

that  the  hidden  treasures  which  were  supposed  to  exist  had  not 
been  found,  and  he  begged  us  to  write  to  the  Pasha,  assuring  him 
that  all  search  had  proved  barren  and  there  was  no  treasure  trove. 

We  were  now  eager  to  get  on,  so,  hi  spite  of  dismal  forebodings 
from  our  crew,  we  insisted  on  setting  sail  in  an  open  caique,  mean- 
ing to  reach  Aivali  as  soon  as  possible ;  but  wind  and  weather 
were  too  much  for  our  poor  little  craft :  we  were  promptly  driven 
over  to  Lesbos,  and  it  was  forty-eight  hours  before  we  managed  to 
reach  our  destination,  after  beating  about  the  bay  half  starved 
and  sleepless. 

There  was  a  British  Vice-Consul  in  the  place — a  Greek — who 
treated  us  most  kindly,  though  it  was  rather  a  disappointment  to 
two  starvelings,  after  having  doubled  St.  Paul's  experience  of 
"  a  night  and  day  in  the  deep,"  to  be  offered,  Turkish  fashion,  a 
teaspoonful  of  jam  and  a  glass  of  water.  However,  a  bountiful 
meal  followed  as  soon  as  it  could  be  cooked.  We  had  a  great 
disappointment  about  horses  ;  there  were  none  to  be  had,  and  it 
was  all  the  more  provoking  as  we  knew  that  we  must  be  causing 
much  trouble  to  our  good  host ;  but  we  did  not  find  out  till  after- 
wards, and  then  to  our  great  confusion,  that  he  actually  turned 
his  wife  and  his  mother-in-law  out  of  doors  in  order  to  lodge  us. 

The  next  day  at  extortionate  prices  we  procured  horses  and  set 
out  for  Pergamos,  riding  through  cotton-fields  and  olive-groves, 
past  a  cemetery  devoted  to  the  remains  of  victims  murdered  by  a 
band  of  brigands  who,  until  twelve  months  earlier,  had  infested 
that  part  of  the  country.  But  now  they  themselves  had  been 
caught  and  entered  upon  the  inheritance  of  their  final  six  feet  of 
earth,  so  we  had  no  fear.  We  reaahed  Pergamos  that  night,  a 
quaint  and  beautiful  old  town  full  of  ruins  and  relics  of  the  past, 
and  lodged  in  a  khan  which  Rembrandt  would  have  etched  with 
delight.  What  effects  he  would  have  produced  with  the  variously 
and  picturesquely  dressed  men,  the  camels  and  the  horses,  all  dimly 
visible,  scarcely  more  than  guessed  at,  under  the  half  light  shed 
by  an  old-fashioned  horn  lantern.  In  two  more  days,  on  the 
28th  of  October,  we  arrived  at  Smyrna,  where  we  spent  a 
most  delightful  week  under  the  auspices  of  Mr.  Cumberbatch,  the 
British  Consul. 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  317 

Before  finally  parting  with  our  kavass,  Hussein,  we  wished  to 
have  a  photograph  of  him.  To  this  he  strongly  objected.  Photo- 
graphy was  not  in  those  days  so  common  in  Turkey,  at  any  rate 
hi  the  out-of-the-way  parts  to  which  he  belonged,  as  it  is  at  present, 
and  he  considered  that  its  practice  must  be  in  no  very  remote 
way  connected  with  black  magic  ;  when,  on  looking  into  the  camera 
he  saw  the  figures  upside  down,  then  he  was  persuaded  that  it 
could  not  be  other  than  the  work  of  Shaitan.  However,  at  length 
he  was  persuaded.  He  was  a  merry,  picturesque  creature,  be- 
guiling his  time  on  the  march  by  singing.  George,  the  dragoman, 
gave  me  a  translation  of  one  of  his  songs.  "  The  falcon  looks  to 
the  water,  but  I  cannot  see  my  Lady.  She  wounds  me,  but  I  know 
not  how  to  cure  the  wound.  The  falcon  loves  to  descend  upon  the 
peacock,  and  I  long  to  kiss  the  white  throat  of  my  Lady.  She 
has  a  knife  in  her  hand  ;  she  is  about  to  murder  me.  Yah  !  Hah  ! 
White  are  your  legs,  oh  !  my  Lady  !  " 

October  29th. — I  was  very  anxious  to  see  the  monument  of 
Sesostris,  a  memorial  of  his  victories,  described  by  that  beloved 
old  traveller  Herodotus,  which  is  at  Nif,  within  reach  of 
Smyrna.  A  longish  excursion.  Herodotus  mentions  two  such 
monuments,  but  so  far  as  I  know  only  this  one  has  been 
discovered.  We  started  at  five  o'clock  hi  the  morning  with  Mr. 
Cumberbatch,  escorted  by  his  kavass  and  a  mounted  policeman. 
Even  had  there  been  no  object  of  profound  historic  and  artistic 
interest  to  be  seen,  the  beauty  of  the  excursion  would  have  amply 
repaid  our  trouble.  As  the  day  broke  we  were  met  by  successions 
of  gorgeously  lovely  landscapes. 

The  valley  along  which  our  road  lay  was  hemmed  in  by  moun- 
tains richly  clothed  with  fruit  trees,  pines,  cypresses  and  oaks, 
enfolded  in  the  graceful  drapery  of  vines  and  curtained  with  the 
festoons  of  climbing  plants  ;  wild  flowers  carpeted  the  "  floor  of 
the  forest,"  and  fragrant  shrubs  perfumed  the  fresh  morning  air. 

In  spring,  when  the  cherries  and  other  fruit  trees  are  in  blossom, 
this  must  be  a  happy  valley  indeed,  but  we  saw  it  at  its  second 
moment  of  supreme  beauty,  when  the  woodland  was  aflame  with 
what  the  Japanese  call  the  brocade  of  the  autumn  tints.  Nestled 
in  the  midst  of  these  feasts  for  the  eye  lies  the  picturesque  little 


318  Memories 

town  of  Nif,  or  Nymphi.  As  we  saw  it,  the  market-place,  with  its 
stalls  surrounding  a  noble  group  of  Oriental  plane  trees,  and  filled 
with  a  busy,  kaleidoscopic  crowd  still,  at  that  time,  clothed  in  Eastern 
garb,  was  like  a  scene  devised  by  some  cunning  stage  artist.  We 
ate  the  food  which  we  had  brought  with  us  in  an  ancient  khan, 
itself  a  picture  of  the  East,  and  then  went  to  visit  the  Governor, 
whom  the  Consul  knew.  For  a  while  we  lingered  in  the  inner  court 
of  the  great  man's  palace,  a  study  such  as  Alma  Tadema  would 
have  loved  to  paint,  with  its  marble  floor,  its  plashing  fountain, 
fringed  with  oleanders,  and  the  arches  of  its  cloister  decked  with 
orange  and  lemon  trees. 

.  Two  milk-white  goats,  his  Excellency's  special  pets,  came  up 
confidentially  to  be  stroked  and  coaxed.  Presently  the  great  man 
received  us  in  an  inner  sanctum.  Pipes,  coffee,  and  phrases  fol- 
lowed as  usual,  and  then  we  went  our  way.  Living  the  life  of  ease 
dear  to  the  Turk  in  such  surroundings — his  home  a  gem  in  the 
loveliest  setting — I  felt  that  the  Pasha  must  have  realized  the 
Italian  dream  of  the  sweetness  of  doing  nothing. 

A  ride  of  about  two  hours  from  the  town  brought  us  to  our  goal. 
It  would  not  be  an  easy  matter  for  a  traveller  to  find  the  effigy 
without  a  guide,  so  well  is  it  hidden  among  the  brushwood  some 
three  hundred  yards  above  a  pretty  little  mountain  burn  which 
comes  tumbling  down  to  the  road.  Would  that  it  had  been  still 
better  screened,  for  though  there  seemed  to  be  people  in  Smyrna 
who  had  never  heard  of  it,  others  there  were  who  had  found  their 
way  thither  and  thought  it  no  sin  to  deface  this  hoary  monument 
by  graving  their  names  in  large  letters  all  over  the  rock.  One 
ruffian,  a  schoolmaster  as  I  was  told,  had  immortalized  his  vul- 
garity by  chiselling  his  name  deeply  on  the  arm  which  lies  across 
the  breast  of  the  old  king.  Had  I  been  an  autocrat  I  would  have 
caused  him  to  be  soundly  flogged  by  his  own  pupils.  They  would 
have  enjoyed  a  rich,  topsy-turvy  treat  and  he  would  have  met 
with  a  punishment  befitting  the  crime. 

The  rock  was  originally  sloping,  but  was  cut  into  the  perpen- 
dicular from  the  bottom  upwards,  leaving  at  the  base  a  ledge  which 
served  as  a  seat  where  a  pilgrim  might  rest  in  comfort.  The  figure 
is  carved  in  deep  relief  and  is  seven  feet  and  seven  inches  high, 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  319 

measuring  four  feet  from  the  right  elbow  to  the  left  hand.  The 
features  are  much  worn  and  the  letters  which  were  on  the  breast 
have  disappeared.  The  left  hand  holds  the  spear  and  the  right 
the  bow.  Here  the  description  of  Herodotus,  otherwise  correct, 
goes  astray,  for  he  reverses  these  positions.  A  very  intelligible 
mistake  if  he  wrote  from  memory  on  his  return  home  from  the 
expedition  ;  or  possibly  his  account  may  have  been  taken  from  the 
other  figure  which  he  mentions.  The  conical  cap,  with  a  badge 
in  front  and  a  sort  of  brim  to  it,  the  spear  and  bow,  the  greaves  on 
the  thigh  and  a  projection  which  must  once  have  been  the  handle 
of  a  sword,  are  quite  distinct. 

We  stayed  for  some  time  in  contemplation  of  this  record,  between 
forty  and  fifty  centuries  old,  of  the  pride  of  the  old  Egyptian  king, 
and  then,  mounting  our  horses,  turned  their  heads  westward,  sad 
that  this  day  of  beauty  had  come  to  an  end.  It  remains  on  my 
memory  as  a  rare  experience,  a  flawless  holiday,  fitly  crowned  by 
a  sunset  that  seemed  to  wreathe  Smyrna  in  flames  and  turn  its 
beauteous  bay  into  a  great  lake  of  liquid  fire. 

October  30th,  Sunday. — A  day  of  rest  much  needed, 
for  since  we  landed  at  the  Dardanelles  we  had  been  a  good 
deal  knocked  about,  far  more  than  appears  in  these  pages,  so  after 
church  we  lounged  lazily  about  Smyrna  and  drank  in  the  glory 
of  the  view  from  the  citadel,  where  the  old  Genoese  towers  stand 
among  the  ruins  that  were  once  a  stronghold  built  by  some  Cyclo- 
pean Vauban.  Here,  too,  is  a  small  mosque  on  a  site  where  the 
Christian  Church  of  the  Revelation  is  said  to  have  stood ;  hard 
by  must  have  been  "  the  synagogue  of  Satan."*  Very  impressive, 
moreover,  is  the  Turkish  cemetery  with  its  old  and  stately  cypresses, 
finer  even,  as  it  seemed  to  us,  than  those  of  Constantinople. 

As  we  wandered  homeward  we  came  down  upon  the  track  of  the 
Smyrna  and  Aidin  Railway.  Wonderful  are  the  caprices  of  fashion  ! 
What  the  Sweet  Waters  of  Europe  are  to  the  ladies  of  Constanti- 
nople, that  to  the  fair  dames  of  Smyrna  were  the  less  romantic 
rails  of  the  new  road.  They  were  the  fashionable  promenade  of 
the  Sabbath-keeping  bourgeoisie — the  line  was  thronged  by  numbers 
of  Turkish  ladies  in  many-coloured  dresses  ;  far  more  closely  veiled 

*  Revelation  ii.  8. 


320  Memories 

in  their  ghostly  white  yashmaks  than  their  more  emancipated 
sisters  in  Stamboul.  Greek,  Armenian  and  Prankish  beauties,  in 
bright  French  or  pseudo-French  raiment — many  of  them  radiant 
with  the  beauty  for  which  Ismir  is  famous — made  a  motley  crowd ; 
while  sedate  old  Turks  sat  sipping  their  coffee  and  smoking  their 
narghilehs  in  silent  dignity  under  the  orange  and  citron  trees  which 
fringe  the  cafes,  watching  from  under  their  sleepy  lids  the  brilliant 
colouring  and  glowing  eyes  of  the  Ionian  dames  and  damsels. 

Waiting  for  a  ship,  or  indeed  for  anything,  is  but  dreary  work, 
but  there  was  no  feeling  dull  at  Smyrna,  for  there  was  much  to 
be  seen  and  done,  and  we  lingered  luxuriously  over  the  little  that 
was  left  of  a  joyous  holiday. 

Of  course  we  went  to  Ephesus,  where  Mr.  Wood,  acting  for  the 
British  Museum,  had  not  yet  made  his  great  discoveries,  though  in 
his  first  year's  work  he  had  unearthed  much  that  was  of  interest. 
The  modern  village  of  Ayazaluk  is  almost  entirely  built  up  of  the 
stones  of  the  old  city  all  huddled  together  higgledy-piggledy. 
Rarely  carved  capitals  of  pillars  turned  topsy-turvy  form  incon- 
gruous bases  for  fir  posts,  supporting  the  verandahs  of  mud-built 
shops  in  which  fruiterers,  pastry  cooks  and  tobacconists  ply  their 
trade.  A  ruined  mosque  is  a  beautiful  relic  of  old  Moorish  archi- 
tecture, inside  of  which  ancient  Greek  pillars  have  been  adapted. 
The  very  stones  in  the  graveyard  are  fragments  of  old  columns  and 
Turkish  marbles  of  the  middle  ages.  But  what  a  noble  position  ! 
And  how  glorious  must  Ephesus  have  been  in  the  days  of  St.  Paul, 
when  it  was  a  seaport  and  its  imposing  citadel  overlooked  the  sea, 
now  (in  1864)  owing  to  alluvial  deposits  some  four  miles  away  ! 

Barring  Damascus,  no  place  is  more  full  of  associations  and 
memories  connected  with  St.  Paul  than  Ephesus.  It  is  strange 
indeed  that  so  little  should  be  known  of  the  life  of  a  saint  whose 
ministry  wrought  more  for  the  world  than  that  of  any  other  man 
before  or  since.  Yet  here  are  the  remains  of  the  very  buildings 
among  which  he  lived  for  years.  It  cannot  be  said  of  Ephesus 
as  Lucan  said  of  Troy  "  etiam  periere  ruinae."  Neither  Goths  nor 
Turks  have  entirely  wiped  them  out. 

Here  is  the  great  amphitheatre  where  the  apostle  "  fought  with 
beasts,"  where  some  twenty-five  thousand  spectators  would  assemble 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  321 

for  such  a  sight,  and  where  Demetrius  the  silversmith  raised  the 
riot  against  him  and  "  the  whole  city  was  filled  with  confusion." 
Here,  too,  is  a  little  square  building  of  stupendous  antiquity,  which 
tradition  says  was  his  prison  ;  and  why  should  it  not  have  been  ? 
I  am  old-fashioned  and  simple  enough  to  have  faith  hi  tradition, 
which  is  often  as  trustworthy  as  the  written  word,  just  as  I  humbly 
accept  the  letter  written  by  St.  Paul  "  to  the  saints  which  are  at 
Ephesus,"  when  he  was  "  an  ambassador  in  bonds,"  at  Rome, 
and  pay  no  heed  to  the  learned  hair-splittings  of  scholastic  com- 
mentators, to  whom  I  would  say,  in  the  famous  words  of  Lord 
Melbourne,  "  Why  can't  you  leave  it  alone  ?  " 

Seven  years  later  I  was  again  at  Ephesus  with  Lord  Stafford 
and  George  Crawley,  and  this  time  we  found  Mr.  Wood  triumphant. 
He  had  just  reaped  the  fruit  of  eight  years  of  assiduous  labour — 
labour  hindered  by  many  difficulties,  lack  of  funds,  discourage- 
ment, and,  last  not  least,  the  pestilent  atmosphere  of  the  fever 
swamps  among  which  he  had  to  work. 

This  second  visit  was  deeply  interesting,  nor  was  it  devoid  of 
a  certain  element  of  fun.  That  time  we  arrived  at  Smyrna  from 
Beirut  in  a  small  Russian  coasting  steamer  which  was  carrying 
pilgrims  from  the  Holy  Land  back  to  Odessa — always  a  curious 
and  interesting  lot  of  passengers,  as  I  often  found.  We  had  to. 
face  a  succession  of  gales,  to  the  great  discomfiture  of  the  poor 
zealots.  One  fat  old  pilgrimess  told  me  pathetically  that  she: 
would  have  died  had  she  not  thought  of  the  inconvenience  that 
her  death  would  cause  on  board,  and  so  in  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice: 
she  resisted  and  consented  to  live. 

In  the  saloon,  such  as  it  was,  we  had  as  shipmate  a  certain 
elderly  American  general,  who  told  us  that  he  was  an  attorney, 
own  correspondent  to  seven  transatlantic  newspapers,  and  that 
his  journals  were  looked  forward  to  by  some  of  the  leading  families 
in  various  cities,  unknown  to  me.  As  a  man  of  letters  he  greatly 
admired  Shakespeare.  "  Yes,  sir !  "  he  said,  "  Shakespeare  is 
quite  an  institution.  Emerson  can  write  some  poetry,  but  I  guess 
he  can't  come  up  to  that.  With  the  Bible,  Shakespeare  and 
Webster's  Dictionary,  a  man  can  get  along.  They  are  as  good 
documents  as  a  man  need  have  for  a  library."  A  dear,  innocent, 
VOL.  i  21 


322  Memories 

unsophisticated  man  was  the  Attorney-General,  very  good-natured, 
and  a  source  of  great  amusement  during  all  the  time  that  he  re- 
mained sticking  to  us  with  the  affection  of  a  burr. 

Our  lucky  star  was  hi  the  ascendant,  for  almost  the  first  person 
whom  we  met  in  Smyrna  was  Mr.  Wood,  who  most  kindly  agreed 
to  go  with  us  to  Ephesus  the  next  morning.  When  we  reached 
the  ruins,  he  showed  us  all  his  plans  and  explained  his  discoveries, 
setting  forth  the  work  of  his  eight  years  hi  an  hour's  pregnant 
talk.  When  he  had  made  all  clear,  the  good  General  said,  "  Then, 
sir,  I  gather  from  your  conversation  that  the  Temple  of  Diana 
was  a  round  building."  "  Round,  sir,  round !  "  said  Mr.  Wood, 
"  haven't  I  been  telling  you  all  the  time  that  it  was  square  ?  " 
Nothing  abashed,  the  General  looked  round  him  and  said  :  "  Waal ! 
if  this  was  the  site  of  the  City  of  Ephesus,  I'm  glad  to  know  it.  It 
was  quite  considerable  of  a  city,  and  the  men  that  built  it  had  some 
snap  hi  'em." 

Steered  by  our  learned  pilot,  we  visited  all  the  wonders  that 
his  patience  and  science  had  revealed — the  Odeion,  a  beautiful 
little  building  with  white  marble  steps  decorated  with  carved  lions' 
feet — the  Wool  Exchange,  a  most  ingenious  discovery — the  marble 
tomb  of  Androclus.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  theatre,  the 
stadium  and  other  great  witnesses  of  the  past.  Did  we  pass  by 
the  tomb  of  Mary  Magdalene,  that  sweet  woman  whom  the  great 
Pope  Gregory,  for  no  earthly  reason  and  without  one  scintilla  of 
evidence,  came  to  identify  with  the  woman  "  which  was  a  sinner  "  ? 
Did  we  see  the  tomb  of  St.  Luke,  who  told  that  unnamed  sinner's 
touching  story  ?  Again  I  say,  why  not  ?  These  are  secrets  which 
will  not  be  revealed  until  the  Last  Day,  when  the  graves  shall  give 
up  their  dead.  But  even  an  Evangelist  must  die  somewhere, 
and  what  is  more  probable  than  that  the  early  Christians,  knowing 
where  his  remains  lay  in  some  place  outside  the  city,  should  have 
brought  them  hither  with  pious  pomp  and  reburied  them  hi  yonder 
round  building,  faced  with  marble  and  bearing  as  its  device  the 
bull,  or  buffalo,  surmounted  with  a  cross  ? 

Mr.  Wood's  great  find,  then  (in  1871)  a  discovery  not  very  many 
days  old,  was  the  undoubted  site  of  the  great  Temple  of  Diana. 
Careful  study  and  reasoning  led  Mr.  Wood  to  begin  excavating 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  323 

at  a  spot  where  he  discovered  the  angle  of  the  peribolus  which  was 
thrown  by  Augustus  mog  0eo£,  the  Son  of  God.  (How  like  the 
Chinese  imperial  title,  Tien  Tze,  the  son  of  Heaven !)  Here  were 
inscriptions  bearing  the  name  of  the  architect,  the  one  partially 
the  other  wholly  erased.  This  tallies  with  an  edict  which  has 
been  found  ordering  that  the  name  of  this  man,  who  had  fallen 
into  disgrace,  should  be  obliterated. 

Having  found  the  angle,  Mr.  Wood  went  to  work  with  new 
enthusiasm  and  energy,  and  was  rewarded  some  two  months  before 
our  arrival  by  the  unearthing  of  a  huge  white  marble  column  of 
exquisite  workmanship  in  situ.  Thus  was  the  vexed  question 
of  the  site  of  the  mighty  temple  set  at  rest  and  Mr.  Wood's  w.rk 
crowned  with  success.  Much  has  been  done  since  his  time ;  but  he 
showed  the  way,  a  successful  pioneer.  When  we  considered  the 
vastness  of  the  inclosure  and  the  magnificent  proportions  of  the 
column  we  understood  the  cry,  "  Great  is  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  !  " 

While  Mr.  Wood  was  giving  us  a  lecture  of  surpassing  interest, 
I  began  to  think  that  even  the  General  was  touched  by  the  sacred 
fire  of  enthusiasm,  but  I  was  reckoning  without  my  General.  He 
was  destined  once  more  to  put  his  foot  in  it.  Like  Sydney  Smith's 
silent  man,  he  rudely  broke  the  spell.  When  Mr.  Wood  had 
finished  speaking,  he  looked  for  a  moment  or  two  pensively  at  the 
column,  and  then  picking  up  a  great  stone,  said :  "  Waal  now  ! 
Do  think  !  If  that  piece  of  marble  was  part  of  the  Temple  of 
Diana,  I  guess  I'm  bound  to  have  a  chunk  of  it,"  and  was  just 
about  to  chip  off  as  large  a  piece  as  he  could,  when  Mr.  Wood,  who 
was  nothing  if  not  peppery,  flew  at  him  viciously ;  the  tiger  that 
lies  sleeping  in  every  man  was  aroused,  and  I  verily  believe  that 
had  Mr.  Wood  held  a  deadly  weapon  in  his  hand  our  poor  Attorney^ 
General  would  have  had  but  a  faint  chance  of  surviving.  As  it 
was  he  collapsed  under  the  great  discoverer's  architectonic  fury 
and  remained  sadly  silent  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  What  manner 
of  report,  I  wonder,  did  the  seven  newspapers  receive  of  our 
Ephesian  expedition  ! 

The  next  morning  at  breakfast  we  took  leav*  of  our  General. 
We  were  bound  for  Constantinople  and  our  ship  was  to  sail 
at  noon.  He  was  bound  heaven  knows  wlither  in  search  of 

VOL.    I  21* 


324  Memories 

paragraphs.  After  breakfast  he  announced  his  intention  of  going 
up  to  the  citadel  of  Smyrna.  "  I  am  informed,"  he  told  us,  "  that 
there  air  up  there  some  Cyclopean  walls.  Now  Cyclops  lived  quite 
a  long  while  ago,  and  I'm  not  going  to  miss  seeing  what  he  built." 
It  was  rather  a  shame  to  disillusion  the  poor  gentleman,  but  I 
thought  of  the  seven  across  the  Atlantic  and  was  stony-hearted. 
When  I  explained  to  him  the  meaning  of  Cyclopean  building  the 
General  was  disenchanted,  but  he  went  up  to  the  citadel  neverthe- 
less, and  I  have  no  doubt  made  a  very  pretty  story  out  of  the  great 
one-eyed  builder. 


And  now  let  me  go  back  seven  years  and  start  again  on  Gun- 
powder Plot  Day,  1864,  when  we  left  the  radiantly  beautiful  bay 
of  Smyrna  for  England  on  board  the  Austrian  Lloyd's  ship  Messina. 
Twenty-six  hours'  steam  brought  us  to  the  Island  of  Syra,  where, 
after  being  roasted  for  a  day  and  a  night  on  that  sun-scorched  rock, 
where  no  trace  of  vegetation  is  to  be  seen — to  all  appearance  an 
island  of  bumboat-men  and  evil  smells — on  the  7th  we  shipped  on 
board  the  Calcutta,  also  an  Austrian  Lloyd's  ship,  bound  for  Trieste. 

It  is  something  to  have  seen  Navarino  and  to  have  passed  Ithaca, 
even  in  the  night ;  but  what  gave  especial  interest  to  our  cruise 
was  meeting  Count  Ungern  Sternberg  (or  was  he  a  Baron  ?  I 
forget),  a  Russian  who  was  a  relation  of  many  people  whom  I  had 
known  well  in  St.  Petersburg.  Though  a  general  in  the  army,  he 
was  one  of  those  travelling  agents  who  hi  those  days  used  to 
wander  over  Europe  apparently  charged  with  no  special  mission, 
but  keeping  their  ears  and  eyes  open  everywhere,  and  doubtless 
finding  many  an  opportunity  of  rendering  some  underground 
service  to  the  rather  tortuous  policy  in  which  the  Russian  Foreign 
Office  in  those  days  delighted.  Now  that  the  Gortchakoffs  and 
Ignatieffs  have  carried  their  diplomacy  into  another  and  let  us 
hope  a  better  world,  there  is  perhaps  no  room  for  the  political 
knight  errant  of  whom  Ungern  Sternberg  was  at  that  time  a  rather 
famous  representative.  I  knew  him  well  by  name,  though  we 
had  never  met,  and  he  was  a  most  agreeable  companion.  We 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  325 

talked  a  great  deal  about  our  common  friends  in  London,  Paris, 
St.  Petersburg  (I  cannot  yet  bring  myself  to  talk  of  Petrograd). 
On  politics,  for  some  reason  best  known  to  himself,  he  was,  as  he 
would  have  put  it,  ires  boutonne  ;  but  when  we  reached  Corfu  and 
he  saw  the  remains  of  the  blown-up  forts  his  excitement  got  the 
better  of  his  diplomacy,  and  he  could  not  conceal  his  joy  at  the 
loss  which  England  had  sustained,  or  his  wonder  at  the  short- 
sightedness which  prompted  it.  **  What  was  your  Lord  Russell 
about  ?  "  he  said.  "  See  how  many  combinations  may  make  England 
regret  this  step.  For  instance,  suppose  that  France  and  Italy — 
no  impossible  contingency — were  united  against  her  ;  what  a  strong- 
hold they  would  have  at  Corfu  !  " 

This  was  much  the  opinion  that  Lord  Palmerston  professed  in 
1850,  but  hi  1863  he  yielded  to  Lord  Russell,  and,  apparently 
without  a  misgiving,  gave  up  what  he  once  considered  too  im- 
portant a  naval  and  military  post  ever  to  be  abandoned  by  us. 
Lord  Russell,  as  usual,  was  outwitted ;  he  believed  in  a  plebiscite 
and  that  a  people  should  belong  to  masters  of  then-  own  choosing ; 
he  could  not  see  that,  in  this  case,  the  plebiscite  was  an  engine  worked 
largely  by  ecclesiastical  means  at  the  disposal  of  Russia — in  fact, 
a  political  and  clerical  intrigue. 

A  very  intelligent  Roman  Catholic  priest  told  me  that  the 
islanders,  having  been  led  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  1858,  to  believe 
that  England  would  never  give  up  the  protectorate,  thought  that 
they  were  quite  safe  in  declaring  for  annexation  to  Greece,  as  they 
were  urged  to  do  by  their  priests.  They  would  in  that  way  save 
their  face  with  the  Orthodox  Church,  while  they  would  still  enjoy 
the  material  prosperity  for  which  they  had  to  thank  England. 
They  thought  that  their  true  interest  was  to  run  with  the  hare 
and  hunt  with  the  hounds.  The  Greek  Archbishop  used  all  his 
power  to  further  the  plans  of  Russia,  and  during  the  time  of  voting 
was  nightly  closeted  in  secret  conference  with  the  Russian  Consul. 
When  the  end  came,  His  Grace  received  a  high  decoration  from 
the  Tsar,  from  whom  it  was  even  said  that  he  was  actually  in 
receipt  of  pay. 

Curiously  enough,  the  party  that  had  been  hottest  for  annexa- 
tion with  Greece  under  King  Otho  would  not  vote  for  it  under 


326  Memories 

King  George.  The  reason  alleged  was  that  the  revolution  against 
Otho  had  been  the  work  of  England,  and  that  King  George  being 
the  nominee  of  England,  annexation  with  Greece  would  put  the 
islands  more  than  ever  under  the  thumb  of  Great  Britain.  My 
priest  went  on  to  deplore  the  rum  which  their  mistaken  national- 
ism had  brought  upon  the  unhappy  people.  Many  of  the  principal 
business  houses  hi  Corfu  were  practically  bankrupt  and  new  failures 
daily  expected.  The  poorer  people  found  no  sale  for  their  fish  and 
the  produce  of  the  farms,  gardens  and  orchards.  The  market, 
which  did  a  roaring  trade  daily,  sometimes  as  much  as  two  or  three 
hundred  pounds  changing  hands  in  a  morning,  was  a  thing  of  the 
past.  Now  there  was  no  English  Government  House,  no  pro- 
sperous officials,  no  garrison,  and  with  the  departure  of  the  last 
redcoat  the  happy  days  of  plenty  had  gone.  "  Oh  !  "  he  cried, 
"  if  you  would  only  come  back  again  !  " 

We  went  to  the  principal  hotel  in  the  great  square.  The  land- 
lord received  us  with  many  expressions  of  joy.  We  ordered 
luncheon  and  a  carriage.  "  I  will  go  and  cook  at  once,"  said  he. 
"  Eh  !  Gentlemen  !  Six  months  ago  I  had  a  cook  and  waiters 
and  maids,  two  coachmen  and  plenty  of  horses.  Now  I  must 
go  and  dress  the  luncheon.  I  must  serve  it ;  and  when  you  have 
finished  I  shall  harness  the  carriage  and  drive  you  out !  and  I 
shall  make  your  beds  if  you  sleep  here  to-night."  Perfectly  good- 
humoured  the  poor  man  was,  and  that  made  his  story  all  the  more 
pathetic. 

When  we  got  home,  after  a  drive  through  the  lovely  garden 
scenery,  he  made  the  beds,  for  we  were  not  to  sail  till  the  next 
day.  More  talk  in  the  evening.  The  distress  was  beyond  belief, 
and  it  was  no  mere  temporary  distress — bad  times  with  the  hope 
of  better  things  in  the  future.  The  olive  harvest,  for  instance, 
was  in  deadly  straits,  for  the  proprietors  could  not  pay  a  wage 
of  five  shillings  a  day  for  the  gathering,  and  the  labourers  were 
the  masters  of  the  situation  and  could  demand  what  they  chose. 
In  this  way  did  the  small  landowners  who  helped  in  working  the 
plebiscite  reap  the  reward  of  their  folly.  Humble  civil  servants 
who  used  to  be  paid  to  the  hour  had  to  wait  a  week  or  a  fortnight 
for  the  salary  upon  which  their  daily  food  depended.  Cultivation 


The  First  Call  of  the  East  327 

looked  as  though  it  must  die  out,  for  the  four  or  five  hundred 
wretched  Greek  soldiery  who  had  replaced  the  English  garrison 
spent  their  scanty  pay  on  tobacco  alone  ;  no  one  knew  how  they 
lived.  Corfu  was  desolate  and  England  had  lost  a  stronghold 
that  never  can  be  replaced.  No  wonder  the  Ungern  Sternbergs 
rejoiced ! 

It  is  perhaps  one  of  the  signs  of  England's  greatness  that  she 
has  been  able  so  far  to  survive  the  foreign  policy  of  Lord  Russell. 
Yet  even  to-day,  in  1915,  she  is  paying  the  penalty  and  at  what 
a  price  !  I  wonder  whether  if  he  were  still  alive  he  would  tell 
us,  as  he  did  at  Blairgowrie  more  than  fifty  years  ago,  to  "  Rest 
and  be  thankful." 

Nov.  ii. — Our  last  day's  cruise  was  delightful.  The  calendar 
told  us  that  we  were  in  November.  The  weather  said  June.  Our 
skipper  being  a  native  of  Dalmatia  intimately  knowing  the  coast 
and  all  its  snares  dared  to  take  his  big  ship  inside  the  islands,  so 
we  had  a  view  of  lovely  scenery  usually  only  possible  for  the 
smallest  of  craft.  At  a  point  on  the  shore  stood  a  little  house 
and  in  front  of  it  a  group  consisting  of  his  wife  and  children,  on 
the  watch  to  wave  him  Godspeed  ;  possibly  the  chance  of  a  glimpse 
of  those  dear  ones  weighed  more  with  him  than  the  desire  to  show 
us  the  beauties  of  the  Dalmatian  coast — at  any  rate,  we  were 
the  gainers. 

At  Trieste  we  said  good-bye  to  our  good  friend  the  Russian, 
whom  we  left  still  chuckling  over  Lord  Russell  and  the  Ionian 
Islands. 


CHAPTER    XV 

CHINA     IN     1865-1866 

IN  "  Un  Pelerin  d' Angkor,"  which  for  the  sake  of  its  wonderful 
descriptions  of  tropical  scenery  is  to  me  one  of  Pierre  Loti's 
most  charming  books,  he  tells  us  how  when  he  was  a  little  child 
he  was  held  in  chains  by  the  idea  of  the  mysterious  temples  hidden 
away,  forgotten,  buried  in  the  teeming  jungles  of  Cambodia,  and 
how  at  last  his  dream  was  realized  in  that  long  pilgrimage  up  the 
Mekong  river  of  which  his  poetic  descriptions,  carrying  us  with 
a  magician'i  wand  into  the  mysterious  silences  of  tropical  forests, 
are  tinged  with  that  melancholy  which  seems  inseparable  from 
his  genius,  even  when  he  calls  up  the  happiness  of  reaching  the 
long- wished  for  goal  of  a  cherished  ambition.  I  once  asked  him 
why  he  was  so  pessimistic — why  that  persistent  note  of  sadness  ? 
He  answered  very  simply,  "  La  vie  est  triste,"  and  his  eyes  had 
that  far  away,  yearning  look,  a  characteristic  of  his,  which  seems 
so  strange  in  a  man  whose  life  has  been  one  long  chain  of  brilliant 
successes. 

Well !  I  too,  as  a  child,  had  dreams  which  carried  me  far  away. 
A  kind  aunt  had  given  me  a  set  of  so-called  rice-paper  pictures  of 
lovely  imperial  ladies  with  architectural  structures  of  hair  on 
their  heads,  gentlemen  clad  in  purple  silk  robes  with  ephods  em- 
broidered with  five-clawed  golden  dragons,  drawings  of  vividly- 
coloured  flowers  and  fruit,  of  horror-striking  tortures,  unheard  of 
out  of  Tartarus,  being  inflicted  upon  bleeding  criminals.  But 
beyond  all  was  the  story  of  Aladdin  falling  in  love  with  the  Princess 
Badroulbadour  on  her  way  to  the  bath  at  Peking.  My  young 
brain  was  aflame  with  the  longing  to  go  to  China  and  see  all  these 

328 


China  in  1865-1866  329 

things.  How  to  manage  it  ?  Should  I  ever  get  nearer  to  that 
land  of  wonders  than  a  certain  fascinating  curiosity  shop  in  Han- 
way  Yard — now  Hanway  Street — a  beloved  and  much-haunted 
place  full  of  bowls  and  jars,  eggshell  china,  rosebacked  plates 
and  lange  Elizen,  which  now  would  fetch  several  pounds  for  every 
shilling  that  they  cost  then.  That  dream  never  left  me.  It 
haunted  my  boyhood  and  my  young  manhood  and,  like  Pierre 
Loti's  cherished  dream,  it  came  into  life  at  last. 

One  day  in  the  month  of  February,  1865,  Mr.  Hammond  came 
into  the  French  Department  of  the  Foreign  Office  evidently 
rather  uneasy.  He  told  us  that  he  was  very  much  put  out  by  not 
being  able  to  get  a  man  to  go  out  to  Peking,  to  take  the  place  of 
St.  John  who  was  coming  home  at  once  across  Siberia.  He  had 
tried  in  vain  to  find  someone  and  was  in  great  difficulties.  A 
sudden  thought  struck  me.  "  Will  you  send  me  out  ?  "  I  asked. 
He  hesitated  for  a  moment  and  said,  "  Well,  if  you  are  really 
willing  to  go,  we  might  arrange  a  transfer.  How  soon  could  you 
be  ready  ?  "  "  As  soon  as  you  please,"  I  answered.  "  Can  you 
be  ready  in  a  fortnight  ?  "  I  jumped  at  the  offer  and  went  out 
then  and  there  to  start  on  getting  together  my  outfit.  It  was 
rather  a  sudden  surprise  to  my  people  when  I  reached  home  that 
afternoon  laden  with  a  sun-helmet  and  various  small  purchases 
of  which  the  purpose  did  not  at  first  sight  seem  quite  clear  to  them. 

The  last  few  days  before  my  departure  were  spent  a  great  deal 
with  Sir  Frederic  Bruce,  our  minister  at  Peking,  who  was  at  home 
on  leave,  and  who  gave  me  all  the  advice  that  would  be  of  value 
to  a  novice  going  out  to  the  Far  East.  He  was  one  of  those  men 
whom  it  is  good  to  have  known,  singularly  handsome,  with  a 
smile  and  laughing  brown  eyes  which  seemed  to  carry  sunshine 
into  every  room  that  he  went  into  ;  he  was  a  diplomatist  of  rare 
ability.  Lord  Elgin,  indeed,  with  whom  he  first  went  out  to 
China,  used  to  say  of  him  that  he  was  by  far  the  ablest  of  the  four 
brothers,  all  of  whom  were  certainly  men  of  mark. 

At  Peking  he  was  an  unqualified  success.  The  Chinese,  im- 
pressed like  all  Asiatics  by  a  fine  reverence  for  lineage  and  blue 
blood,  saw  in  him  a  great  gentleman  whose  transparent  honesty 
they  could  trust.  There  were  not  very  many  legations  in  China 


33°  Memories 

in  his  time,  but  the  ministers  who  were  his  colleagues,  men  like 
M.  de  Bourboulon,  the  Frenchman,  and  General  Vlangaly,  the 
Russian,  were  devoted  to  him.  They  listened  to  him  with  the 
most  profound  respect  and  affection,  and  General  Vlangaly  told 
me  that  whenever  any  knotty  problem  cropped  up  the  first  ques- 
tion was  "  Qu'en  dira  Sir  Frederic  ?  "  His  own  staff  from  Wade 
downwards  worshipped  him.  "  Wade  is  a  great  mimic,"  he  said 
to  me  once,  "  mind  you  ask  him  whether  he  has  added  me  to  his 
Gallery  of  Illustration."*  He  had  done  so,  for  when  I  asked 
Wade  the  question  at  Peking,  he  went  off  at  score  and  told  me 
how  on  one  occasion  he  was  interpreting  for  Sir  Frederic  at  the 
Tsung  Li  Ya-men  (the  Foreign  Office)  when  he,  Wade,  who  was 
pepper  itself,  got  extremely  angry,  while  Sir  Frederic  was  quietly 
puffing  away  at  his  cheroot.  "  But,"  said  the  Prince  Regent,  "  I 
see  that  you  are  very  angry — yet  I  believe  that  you  are  inter- 
preting for  Pu  Ta  Jen  (Sir  F.  Bruce)  ;  he,  ^m  the  contrary,  appears 
to  be  quite  calm — not  a  bit  angry."  "  There,  Sir  Frederic,"  said 
Wade,  furious,  "  the  Prince  says  that  you  are  not  angry — that  it 
is  only  I  who  am  excited."  "  Oh  !  Damme/'  drawled  Sir  Frederic 
in  his  large,  good-humoured  way,  taking  the  cheroot  out  of  his 
mouth,  "  tell  him  I'm  deyvlish  angry,"  and  with  that,  beaming 
upon  Prince  Rung  and  the  assembled  mandarins,  he  smoked 
away  as  contentedly  as  before.  Wade  was  telling  the  story  against 
himself,  and  as  he  told  it  I  could  almost  fancy  that  Sir  Frederic 
was  in  the  room. 

The  day  before  I  left  I  went  to  say  good-bye  to  Sir  Frederic. 
When  we  shook  hands  he  said,  "  Remember  that  when  you  come 
back  from  China  you  must  come  to  me  wherever  my  post  may 
be  !  That  is  to  say,"  he  added  with  a  sigh,  "  if  I  survive  the  age 
of  fifty,  which  seems  to  be  fatal  to  all  of  my  family."  The  sad  "  if  " 
was  justified  !  He  went  out  as  Minister  to  the  United  States, 
won  all  hearts  there  as  he  did  everywhere  else,  and  died  of  heart 
failure  at  some  small  railway  station.  I  was  told  afterwards 

*  The  "  Gallery  of  Illustration  "  was  a  place  of  entertainment  famous 
in  those  days  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  German  Reed  (Miss  Priscilla 
Horton),  with  whom  were  joined  Arthur  Cecil  and  Corney  Grain.  They 
produced,  among  other  famous  pieces,  Sullivan  and  Burnand's  Cox  and  Box. 


China  in  1865-1866  331 

that  a  tablespoonful  of  brandy  might  have  saved  his  precious 
life  !  His  death  in  1867,  at  the  age  of  fifty-three,  was  mourned 
in  the  East  and  in  the  West. 

1865 

I  REACHED  Paris  on  the  8th  of  March  ;  I  was  obliged  to  spend 
forty-eight  hours  there,  as  there  were  certain  matters  to  which 
I  was  compelled  to  attend,  also  I  was  anxious  to  see  Mr.  John 
Dent,  the  head  of  the  famous  China  house,  and  Baron  Overbeck, 
the  Austrian  Consul  General  in  Hong  Kong,  who  was  going  East 
by  the  same  mail.  It  was  no  great  penance  having  to  pass  two 
evenings  in  Paris  with  them,  for  there  was  much  going  on,  and 
Offenbach's  "  Belle  Helene  "  a  delight,  with  Schneider  and  Dupuis, 
was  in  full  swing.  Was  there  ever  a  piece  half  so  gay,  half  so  witty, 
or  half  so  impudent !  The  face  of  Paris  when  Helen  showed  him 
"  mes  portraits  de  famille,"  Jupiter  and  Leda,  Jupiter  and  Europa, 
Jupiter  and  Danae,  etc.,  was  something  to  remember  ! 

The  loth  of  March,  1865,  was  a  fateful  day  for  the  Napoleonic 
Dynasty,  for  on  that  day  the  Due  de  Morny,  Louis  Napoleon's 
half  brother  and  most  devoted  friend,  died.  He  was  attended  by 
Sir  Joseph  Olliffe,  the  physician  of  the  English  Embassy,  arousing 
great  jealousy  among  the  French  doctors,  who  of  course  swore 
that  his  life  might  have  been  saved.  Morny  was  the  son  of  the 
Comte  de  Flahault,  an  old  friend  of  my  father's  whom  I  knew 
when  he  was  ambassador  in  London,  and  Queen  Hortense.  When 
Louis  Napoleon  became  President  of  the  Republic  the  two  brothers 
met  for  the  first  time,  and  the  deepest  affection  immediately  sprang 
up  between  the  two.  Under  the  Empire,  Morny  who  with  Maupas, 
Persigny,  and  St.  Arnaud,  had  been  one  of  the  chief  actors  in  the 
coup  d'etat  of  1851,  became  President  of  the  Corps  Le"gislatif,  and 
held  that  office  until  1856,  when  he  went  as  ambassador  to  St. 
Petersburg,  and  in  great  splendour  represented  Louis  Napoleon 
at  the  coronation  of  the  Emperor  Alexander  the  Second.  On  his 
return  to  Paris  in  1857  he  again  took  up  the  post  of  President. 

He  was  a  dandy  and  viveur,  a  man  of  many  accomplishments, 
and  a  capable  if  rather  erratic  statesman,  but  he  was  one  of  those 
members  of  the  Imperial  group  who  were  fiercely  accused  of 


332  Memories 

gambling  on  the  Bourse.  However  that  might  be,  he  was  immensely 
popular.  Paris  loved  him,  fascinated  by  his  reputation  of  irre- 
sistibility, and  even  by  the  contemptuous,  haughty  look  with 
which  he  strode  through  the  world  ;  when  he  died,  the  grief  was 
general  and  unfeigned  ;  and  poor  Sir  Joseph  Olliffe  was  very 
cruelly  attacked  by  the  Faculty  who  were  sure  of  the  applause  of 
the  mob.  The  story  of  Morny's  life  and  death  furnished  the 
"  motif "  of  Alphonse  Daudet's  book  "  Le  Nabab,"  which  was 
certainly  not  written  in  the  Napoleonic  interest,  for  indeed  Daudet 
was  a  partisan  of  the  old  regime.  When  Morny  offered  him  a 
post  in  his  private  office  he  felt  bound  in  common  honesty  to  say 
that  he  was  a  legitimist.  "  Ma  foi !  L' Imperatrice  Test  aussi," 
answered  Morny,  with  his  quiet,  impertinent  smile.*  The  frivolous 
side  of  Morny,  the  "  Richelieu-Brummell,"  as  Daudet  called 
him,  was  always  very  much  in  evidence,  and  it  was  said,  not  with- 
out truth,  that  he  showed  far  more  interest  in  the  rehearsals  of 
M.  Choufteuri  restera  chez  lui — a  rather  poor  operatic  farce  of  his 
for  which  Offenbach  wrote  the  music — than  ever  he  did  in  the 
discussions  of  the  Corps  Legislatif.  Indeed,  while  M.  Choufteuri 
was  in  preparation  he  was  neither  to  have  nor  to  hold,  he  would 
attend  to  nothing  else. 

Louis  Napoleon  went  to  take  leave  of  his  brother  on  his  death- 
bed. When  the  moment  for  leaving  came,  the  dying  man,  hold- 
ing the  Emperor's  hand  in  his,  summoned  up  strength  enough 
to  say :  "  Sire,  mefiez-vous  de  1'Allemagne !  "  Those  were  his 
last  pregnant  words  to  the  Sovereign  and  brother  whom  he  loved 
so  well.  This  was  told  me  by  one  who  was  present  at  what  he 
described  as  a  most  touching  death-bed  scene,  for  the  love  between 
the  two  men  was  very  real.  That  dying  speech  was  prophetic. 

Had  Morny  lived  things  might  have  been  very  different ;  but 
his  death  left  a  blank  which  could  not  be  filled  ;  Louis  Napoleon 
was  fast  growing  old,  martyrized  by  the  disease  which  ultimately 
killed  him  ;  he  needed  a  strong  man  at  his  elbow — a  man  with 
political  prescience  ;  failing  that  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  gang, 
Ollivier,  Gramont,  Lebceuf  and  others,  with  female  influences  at 
work  behind  them,  who  led  him  to  his  ruin.  Morny  in  spite  of 
*  See  the  preface  to  "  Le  Nabab." 


China  in  1865-1866  333 

his  gay,  devil-may-care  dandyism,  could  see  clearly  ahead  ;  he 
and  he  alone  among  the  Emperor's  surroundings  might  have 
saved  the  dynasty.  But  that  was  not  to  be ;  it  was  doomed. 
The  passing  bell  for  Morny  rang  the  knell  of  the  Empire. 

The  intimacy  between  Morny  and  Sir  Joseph  Olliffe,  an  old  friend 
of  ours  whom  we  all  loved,  was  something  more,  if  possible,  than 
that  between  physician  and  patient.  There  was  a  very  firm  attach- 
ment between  the  two,  and  they  were  engaged  hi  an  affair  in  which 
they  both  took  the  greatest  interest.  It  was  they  who  built  Deau- 
ville  upon  a  site  which  I  remember  a  flat  wilderness  of  sand,  with  a 
few  scanty  bristles  of  rushes  cropping  up  here  and  there,  opposite 
Trouville,  on  the  other  side  of  the  outlet  of  the  river  Toucques 
It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  if  Mora  in  the  "  Nabab  "  was  a  more  or 
less  faithful  portrait  of  Morny,  Jenkins,  the  quack  Doctor,  was 
certainly  not  drawn  from  Sir  Joseph  Olliffe,  who  was  as  upright  and 
transparent  an  English  gentleman  as  ever  entered  the  medical 
profession.  He  was  respected  and  loved  by  all  who  knew  him. 

On  the  night  of  the  Due  de  Morny's  death  I  left  Paris  for  Mar- 
seilles. A  terrible  voyage  on  board  the  P.  &  O.  s.s.  Massilia. 
The  Gulf  of  Lyons  was  in  a  perfect  fury,  and  the  passengers  sea-sick 
and  mostly  sulky  at  having  to  go  out  to  "  meet  "  the  hot  weather 
on  the  other  side.  This  made  ladies  out  of  season,  but  my  cabin- 
companion — one  of  those  grumblers  who  are  such  a  misfortune 
in  the  East — told  me  that  even  if  it  had  been  to  "  meet  "  the  cool 
weather  he  should  have  left  his  wife  and  children  behind  ;  according 
to  him  India  was  not  a  fit  place  fpr  an  English  sow,  let  alone  an 
English  gentlewoman.  The  sea  was  so  high  that  even  the  live  stock 
on  board  suffered.  Bets  were  going  as  to  whether  one  bullock 
would  survive  the  night  of  the  iyth  of  March — odds  against  were 
laid  freely.  I  do  not  remember  which  won — the  sea  or  the  bullock. 

When  the  railway  deposited  us  at  Suez  (there  was  no  Canal  in  those 
days)  we  were  shipped  on  board  the  Simla,  a  crack  ship.  I  had  the 
luck  to  be  separated  from  my  grumbling  ship-mate  of  the  Massilia, 
and  was  doubled  up  with  Colonel  Gloster,  who  was  going  out  to 

command  the  Regiment  in  India.    He  and  I  and  Overbeck 

with  one  or  two  others  made  a  very  pleasant  little  coterie.  How 
much  more  delightful  were  the  ships  of  those  days,  with  their 


334  Memories 

beautiful,  free,  white  decks  and  a  view  of  the  sea  all  round,  than 
the  modern  floating  castles,  with  all  their  extravagances  and 
luxurious  discomforts.  Everything  was  spick  and  span,  the  metal 
fittings  and  binnacle  shone  like  the  gold  in  a  Regent  Street  jeweller's 
shop.  The  decks  were  so  clean  that  you  might  have  eaten  your 
dinner  off  them,  and  the  quartermasters,  as  smart  as  blue-jackets 
hi  the  Navy,  were  always  on  the  alert  to  put  the  crooked  straight 
or  render  some  small  service.  It  was  like  yachting  hi  its  highest 
perfection. 

A  few  days  of  lovely  weather  hi  the  balmy  air  of  the  Indian  Ocean, 
lounging,  dozing,  dreaming,  watching  the  wild  leaps  of  the  flying- 
fish  escaping  from  the  dolphins,  speculating  upon  the  unknown  that 
lay  ahead — those  were  days  of  which  every  hour  was  precious.  The 
four  or  five  of  us  older  men  who  had  made  friends  sat  together  in  a 
well-chosen  corner.  The  griffins  and  youngsters  bound  for  the  far 
East  left  us  severely  to  ourselves  ;  we  were  told  that  they  called 
our  corner  the  lions'  den.  Well,  we  were  very  happy  and  did  not 
growl  too  much.  At  Pointe  de  Galle  Overbeck  and  I  bade  Gloster 
good-bye. 

At  Hong  Kong,  after  three  or  four  delightful  days,  thanks  to 
the  hospitality  of  Messrs.  Dent,  I  parted  from  Overbeck,  and  the 
last  link  with  the  "  lions'  den  "  of  the  Simla  was  finally  broken. 
He,  Gloster  and  I  corresponded  fitfully,  but  we  did  not  meet  again 
for  nine  years,  and  then  in  rather  a  curious  way — indeed,  if  it  were 
not  for  the  wish  to  record  the  meeting  later  on,  and  to  explain  its 
significance,  I  should  not  have  ventured  to  write  about  the  voyage. 
All  the  "  old  China  hands  "  of  the  sixties  will  remember  with 
affection  Captain  "  Ikey  "  Bernard,  who  commanded  the  Ganges 
which  carried  me  from  Hong  Kong  to  Shanghai.  Captain  Bernard 
was  a  great  character  in  the  China  Sea.  He  was  the  son  of  a  former 
professor  of  Hebrew  at  Cambridge,  from  whom  he  had  inherited 
literary  tastes  of  which  the  choice  little  library  in  his  cabin  gave 
proof,  and  he  kept  glowing  more  than  a  small  spark  of  that  sacred 
fire  which  burns  upon  the  University  altar.  He  made  me  free  of 
his  cabin,  and  I  spent  many  hours  there  in  great  comfort,  and  with 
some  profit. 

He  was,  moreover,  something  of  an  epicure,  and  he  and  I  and  two 


China  in  1865-1866  335 

other  passengers  dined  and  had  luncheon  in  his  cabin,  where  we  had 
the  best  that  the  ship  could  afford  :  it  was  a  coasting  voyage  through 
narrow  island  passages,  where  one  could  almost  hear  the  fury  of  the 
sea  dashing  itself  against  the  black  rocks  frowning  on  either  side  ; 
we  passed  many  fishing  junks  with  their  busy  crews,  and  the  skipper, 
who  never  could  resist  the  temptation  of  fresh  fish,  would  stop  and 
buy  quantities  of  pomfret,  all  alive,  paying  for  them  hi  ship's 
biscuit.  Those  were  the  halcyon  days  of  monopoly.  Fancy  stop- 
ping a  mail  steamer  to  buy  fish  in  these  times  of  ocean-racing  and 
competition  !  Fifty  years  ago,  "Ikey"  Bernard  did  not  hesitate. 
His  father  must  have  been  a  very  cultivated  and  remarkable  man. 
I  remember  a  book  of  essays  upon  various  subjects  by  him,  full  of 
wise  and  clever  thoughts,  amongst  others  one  on  Inspiration  which 
fascinated  me.  I  often  met  my  friend  "  Ikey  "  during  the  years 
that  I  spent  in  the  Far  East,  for,  welcome  whenever  his  ship  touched 
the  shore,  he  was  one  of  those  much-invited  men,  whom  everybody 
is  glad  to  secure,  and  we  had  many  pleasant  talks  about  all  things 
and  some  others. 

Often  I  wondered  what  took  him  to  sea  ;  with  his  literary  tastes, 
which  must  have  developed  very  young,  he  would  have  been  so 
perfectly  suited  to  a  student's  career,  so  entirely  at  home  installed 
in  the  comfortable  arm-chair  of  some  common  room,  sipping  his 
port  after  a  good  dinner  in  hall  at  the  end  of  a  day  congenially  spent 
hi  the  thumbing  of  folios  and  quartos.  He  would  have  been  an 
ideal  Don — he  was  a  splendid  seaman.  My  old  shipmate  has  pro- 
bably long  since  gone  to  his  rest.  If  he  be  yet  alive,  my  duty  to 
him  !  If  not,  may  that  rest  be  peace  !  He  was  a  genial,  honest 
cultivated  gentleman,  and  there  are  many  less  worthy  names  whose 
memory  has  been  celebrated  by  far  defter  pens  than  mine. 

When  I  left  Shanghai  for  Tientsing  on  the  nth  of  May  I  was  at 
last  alone  in  the  world.  Up  to  that  time  I  had  had  a  succession 
of  pleasant  companions  on  board ;  now,  besides  the  very  offensive 
native  families  huddled  hi  the  steerage,  who,  when  the  sun  shone, 
spent  their  time  in  the  hunting  of  fleas — and  worse — there  was  but 
one  other  passenger — one  of  the  curious  waifs  and  strays  of  Europe 
who  at  that  time  used  to  float  about  the  China  Sea,  hoping  to  get  a 
job,  if  not  out  of  the  Peking  Government,  at  any  rate  out  of  some 


336  Memories 

provincial  Governor  or  local  mandarin.  I  suppose  that  they  some- 
times succeeded  ;  at  any  rate  they  were  always  ready  to  stake  their 
small  capital  upon  the  venture  ;  if  they  failed,  when  the  hundred  or 
two  of  dollars  were  spent  they  went  under  and  joined  the  seething 
mass  of  undesirables  who  used  to  loaf  about  the  open  ports,  picking 
up  a  meal  and  a  drink — oftenest  a  drink — wherever  the  fates  would 
be  kind. 

It  was  a  dull  voyage  through  a  leaden  sea  into  which  we  steamed 
after  a  thick  fog  had  sent  us  hard  and  fast  aground  on  one  of  the 
treacherous  shoals  of  the  Yang  TsS  Chiang.  Then  came  a  spell  of 
dirty  weather,  till  we  reached  the  fine  broad  headland  of  the  Shan- 
tung promontory  with  the  outlying  rocky  islands,  which  are  the 
danger  of  this  part  of  the  China  sea.  There  was  a  strong  colony  of 
rats  on  board,  and  hi  the  great  river  we  had  shipped  a  host  of  the 
most  ravenous  mosquitoes,  whose  singing  was  almost  as  bad  as  their 
biting.  Altogether  a  trip  that  is  best  forgotten. 

There  was  plenty  of  time  to  think  over  all  the  wonders  that  I 
had  seen  since  leaving  Suez — Mount  Sinai — the  yellow  desert  of 
Eastern  Africa ;  the  fiery  rocks  of  Aden ;  the  palm  groves  of 
Ceylon,  lapped  by  the  waves  of  the  Indian  Ocean ;  the  nutmeg 
orchards  of  Penang  scenting  the  air  ;  the  pineapple  hedges  of  Singa- 
pore ;  brown  huts  teeming  with  even  browner  life,  lifted  above  the 
fever-swamps  like  the  old  lake-dwellings  of  the  men  who  lived 
before  history  was ;  Canton,  with  its  narrow  streets  and  many- 
coloured,  gilded  perpendicular  signs,  as  if  a  pantomime  procession 
had  been  suddenly  arrested  and  turned  to  stone  by  the  head  of  a 
Medusa.  But  above  all,  the  boundless  hospitality  and  kindness 
of  the  merchant  princes  of  Hong  Kong  and  Shanghai. 

Those  were  the  last  of  the  days  when  the  China  trade  was  in  the 
hands  of  a  few  great  houses;  when  the  wonderful  yearly  ocean 
race  took  place  to  land  the  first  cargo  of  tea  in  London  ;  when  the 
opium-clippers  from  Bombay  would  lie  under  Pok-Fa-Lum,  land 
the  supercargo  and  wait  till  he  and  the  house  to  which  his  ship  was 
consigned  had  made  the  price  and  then  sail  gallantly  round  the 
corner  into  Hong  Kong.  Vast  fortunes  were  made  in  opium,  silk 
and  tea,  and  right  royally  were  they  spent.  The  men  who  used  up 
their  lives  in  unhealthy  climates,  far  away  from  home  and  family,. 


China  in  1865-1866  337 

sacrificing  much  and  often  suffering  much,  felt  that  they  had  a 
right  to  find  what  compensation  they  could  hi  making  their  banish- 
ment tolerable  ;  but  what  they  seemed  to  delight  hi  more  than  aught 
else  was  hi  welcoming  those  fellow  countrymen  whom  duty  or 
pleasure  carried  within  possible  range  of  their  kindness. 

There  were  no  hotels  hi  the  old  days,  but  any  man  who  had  a 
letter  for  one  of  the  great  houses  would  be  sure  of  as  hearty  a  wel- 
come as  if  he  had  been  an  old  and  a  dear  friend. 

Our  one  port  of  call  was  Chifu,  a  quaint  little  seaside  town  with 
rather  a  pretty  background  of  hills,  used  as  a  sea-bathing  place  by 
some  of  the  Europeans  hi  North  China.  Here  it  was  that  a  few 
months  before  a  not  very  large  packing-case  was  delivered,  which, 
on  being  opened,  was  found  to  contain  human  fragments  which 
were  the  remains  of  the  traitor  Burgevuie,  an  adventurer  who, 
having  been  first  hi  the  service  of  the  Imperial  Government,  went 
over  to  the  Taiphig  rebels,  and  finally  falling  into  the  hands  of  the 
Imperial  army,  was  sentenced  to  death  by  Ling  Chi — hacking  to 
pieces  in  small  morsels,  the  punishment  of  high  treason. 

Here  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  a  notable  man,  one  of  those 
heroes  who  disappear,  unknown  and  unrecorded,  swallowed  up  by 
some  cataclysm  of  fate  before  the  world  has  had  a  chance  of  knowing 
what  it  has  lost.  Mr.  Thomas  was  a  missionary  sent  out  by  the 
London  Missionary  Society  to  China ;  he  had  a  real  genius  for 
acquiring  languages — speaking  French,  German,  Russian,  without 
having  had  any  facility  save  his  own  talents  and  industry.  It 
was  not  long  before  he  attained  quite  a  considerable  proficiency 
in  the  spoken  language  of  northern  China,  but  when  he  had  been 
eighteen  months  in  the  country  he  was  called  upon  by  the  Society 
to  preach  in  Chinese.  This  he  refused  to  do,  for  he  was  too  clever 
a  linguist  not  to  be  aware  of  the  pitfalls  created  by  a  modicum  of 
knowledge,  and  he  declined  to  make  Christianity  ridiculous.  So 
he  and  the  Society  parted,  and  he  continued  to  work,  living  upon 
a  miserable  pittance  as  best  he  might. 

In  the  meantime  he  had  become  bitten  with  the  desire  to  learn 
Corean — a  language  of  which  practically  nothing  was  known.  He 
made  friends  with  the  skipper  of  a  Corean  junk  trading  with  Chifu, 
on  board  of  which  he  lived  for  some  weeks.  He  urged  his  friend  to 

VOL.  I  22 


33**  Memories 

let  him  sail  with  him  for  Seoul,  but  the  Hermit  Kingdom,  as  it  was 
called,  resolutely  shut  its  gates  to  all  foreigners,  and  to  approach  it 
was  death.  Nothing  daunted,  Mr.  Thomas  ended  by  gaining  his 
point,  and  the  skipper  consented  to  take  him,  on  condition  that  he 
should  wear  the  native  dress,  in  mourning,  which  meant  that  a 
veil  should  hang  from  the  brim  of  the  tall  hat,  completely  concealing 
the  face.  The  voyage  was  successful,  the  venturesome  Englishman 
was  not  discovered,  and  it  was  not  long  after  his  return  that  I  met 
him.  He  was  a  singularly  attractive  personality,  handsome,  clever 
and,  in  spite  of  a  certain  modest  reticence,  very  interesting. 

There  is  an  old  French  saying,  Qui  a  bu  boira.  Mr.  Thomas  was 
not  contented  with  his  unique  achievement ;  he  must  needs  go  back 
again.  He  could  not  rest.  At  last,  after  many  vain  trials,  by  hold- 
ing out  prospects  of  great  gain,  he  persuaded  the  captain  of  a  small 
American  ship  to  sail  for  Corea  with  himself  as  interpreter.  It  is 
known  that  they  reached  Chemulpho  and  anchored  in  the  Seoul 
River.  In  the  night  the  Coreans  came  down  in  force  and  set  fire 
to  the  ship.  "  The  rest  is  silence  !  " — not  a  soul  escaped.  It  was 
at  Peking  that  I  heard  the  news  some  months  later  ;  and  it  was  there 
that  I  realized  how  wise  he  had  been  when  he  refused  to  degrade 
our  Faith  by  attempting  to  expound  it  to  a  people  singularly  alive 
to  the  dignity  of  letters. 

There  was  in  Peking  in  my  time  one  of  the  best  men  that  I  ever 
knew.  He  was  a  Scot,  possessed  of  some  means  of  his  own,  besides 
a  salary  from  the  Society  which  sent  him  out  as  missionary.  He 
worked  like  a  slave  at  the  language,  and  translated  the  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress "  into  Chinese,  which  he  published  with  pictures  of 
Christian  and  all  the  great  characters  dressed  in  the  Chinese  costume 
with  pig-tails.  Alas  !  in  many  removals  my  copy,  which  he  gave 
me,  has  been  lost.  He  also  wore  the  native  dress,  lived  on  a  tiao, 
something  like  sixpence  of  our  money,  a  day,  and  gave  the  rest  of 
his  ample  means  to  the  poor.  He  had  no  particle  of  linguistic 
talent,  and  yet  he  would  preach  !  I  have  heard  him  address  a  crowd 
of  Chinese  outside  the  Chien  Men,  the  great  gate  of  the  Tartar  city, 
from  the  top  of  a  cart,  preaching  in  Chinese  pronounced  with  a  strong 
Aberdonian  accent,  and  when  he  had  finished  call  out  "  Ni  men  tung 
te  PU  tung  te  "  ("  Do  you  understand?  "),  and  with  one  accord  the 


China  in  1865-1866  339 

crowd  cried  back,  shaking  their  hands  from  side  to  side  :   "  Pu  tung 
te  !  "  ("  We  don't  understand"). 

And  now  try  to  realize  what  this  means.  Fancy  a  Chinese 
missionary  standing  on  the  top  of  a  taxi-cab  at  Charing  Cross, 
preaching  Buddhism  in  pidgin  English  to  a  cockney  mob,  and  you 
have  the  analogy.  Here  was  a  good  man,  a  very  good  man,  whose 
whole  life  was  an  example  of  the  purest  Christianity,  turning  that 
Christianity  into  a  farce,  for  the  "  heathen  "  to  mock  at. 

How  well  I  remember  a  few  days  after  my  arrival  at  Peking,  as  I 
was  riding  out  of  the  Legation  gates,  being  greeted  by  a  gentleman 
in  Chinese  dress,  who  was  sitting  on  the  bench  by  the  escort's  guard- 
room, in  the  broadest  Scotch.  It  was  my  friend  the  missionary. 
He  had  a  little  church  of  his  own  at  which  his  few  converts  attended, 
and  there  was  one  little  boy,  by  whom  he  set  great  store,  who  was 
by  way  of  acting  in  some  sort  as  attendant.  When  the  good  man  was 
engrossed  in  his  sermon,  John  (for  he  had  been  baptized)  would 
quietly  run  out  and  indulge  in  foot-shuttlecock — a  very  pretty  game, 
by  the  bye — or  some  other  sport  dear  to  the  Pekingese  street  arabs, 
until  the  voice  of  the  preacher  ceased,  when  he  would  be  sternly 
called  back  to  his  duties. 

Mr.  Thomas  knew  better  than  to  risk  the  ridicule  of  preaching* 
When  the  Society  insisted,  they  lost  the  services  of  a  saint,  a 
devoted  apostle  who  was,  above  all  other  men  whom  I  came  across, 
in  the  Far  East,  fitted  by  genius,  by  learning,  and  by  courage,  to. 
have  done  the  work  which  they  and  he  had  at  heart,  Few- 
personalities  that  I  have  met  in  the  long  days  of  my  life  have 
impressed  me  more.  He  was  a  young  man,  about  eight  and  twenty  % 
Had  he  lived  he  must  have  made  his  mark ;  he  fell  a  sacrifice  to» 
ignorance  and  stupidity,  the  two  demons  which  have  wrought 
so  much  evil  in  the  world.  i 

We  left  Chifu  in  the  afternoon  of  Monday,  the  fifteenth  of  May, 
and  on  the  Tuesday  morning  took  in  the  pilot  who  was  to  steer 
us  up  the  tortuous  course  of  the  Pei  Ho  river.  The  first  sight  of 
the  Taku  Forts  filled  me  with  pity  for  the  two  garrisons — the  one 
British,  the  other  French — which  had  occupied  them  since  1860 
lest  the  disaster  of  1859,  when  Sir  Frederic  Bruce  tried  in  vain  to 
reach  Peking  for  the  ratification  of  the  Treaty  and  two  of  our  gun- 
VOL.  i  22* 


34°  Memories 

boats  were  sunk,  should  be  repeated.  The  desolation  of  the  place 
was  chilling.  On  the  side  of  the  fort  occupied  by  our  troops  were 
a  few  mud  huts  and  a  sort  of  wretched  inn,  the  rendezvous  of  pilots. 

On  the  French  side  it  was  even  worse — nothing  but  an  endless 
bleak  tract  of  mud,  flush  with  the  filthy  water,  all  of  one  colour 
with  the  land,  so  that  it  was  hard  to  say  where  the  mud  ended  and 
the  sea  began,  and  even  the  wild  fowl  seemed  sad  and  desolate, 
and  I  wondered  why,  having  wings,  they  did  not  fly  to  some  more 
cheerful  home.  No  more  filthy  little  stream  than  the  Pei  Ho 
ever  defiled  a  sea.  As  I  wrote  at  the  time :  "  Mud  forts,  mud 
houses,  mud  fields,  and  a  muddy  river  discharging  its  daily  burthen 
of  mud  into  a  muddy  sea — everything  is  mud."  It  is  difficult  for 
water,  especially  running  water,  to  be  ugly  and  uninteresting,  but 
the  Pei  Ho  accomplished  that  feat.  Higher  up  the  stream  there 
were  some  stunted  trees  and  green  fields,  but  the  country  was 
utterly  dull  and  featureless.  The  navigation  of  the  river  was 
difficult  enough  ;  perpetually  shifting  mud-banks  in  mid-stream 
made  the  channel  as  crooked  and  uncertain  as  Chinese  diplomacy. 

Several  times  we  collided  with  junks,  and  on  more  than  one 
occasion  our  pilot  had  to  send  men  ashore  with  a  hawser  which 
they  fastened  round  a  willow  tree  to  let  the  ship  swing.  She  was 
a  queer  little  tramp,  stout  enough  and  fast  enough,  as  times  went, 
for  she  could  do  her  eight  knots,  and  perhaps  a  half,  in  the  open 
sea,  but  the  strangest  thing  about  her  was  that,  although  nominally 
belonging  to  a  German  firm,  she  was  really  owned  by  a  Chinese 
merchant  in  Tientsing,  to  whom  the  whole  of  her  cargo  was  con- 
signed. That  fifty  years  ago  the  Chinese,  so  stiff-backed  against 
all  that  was  European,  should  have  owned  a  foreign-built  steam 
tramp  seems  almost  incredible.  But  the  little  Yiin  tsefei,  "  Walkee 
all  same  fly,"  as  a  Chinaman  translated  her  name,  did  her  little 
commercial  patrol  of  the  Gulf  of  Pei-chi-li  with  great  regularity. 

I  found  Tientsing  holiday-making.  Saurin,  my  old  friend  and 
colleague,  had  come  down  from  Peking  for  the  races  with  M.  Glinka, 
an  attache  of  the  Russian  Legation,  and  they  were  staying  with 
M.  Buitzow,  the  Russian  Consul,  who  very  kindly  put  me  up  also  ; 
I  met  him  again  eight  years  later,  on  the  occasion  of  my  second 
visit  to  Japan  in  1873 — a  very  agreeable  man. 


China  in  1865-1866  341 

It  was  a  stroke  of  luck  falling  in  with  Saurin,  for  we  left  Tientsing 
together  the  next  day  and  so  I  had  a  friend  under  whose  auspices 
I  was  able  to  reach  Peking  in  far  greater  comfort  than  I  could  have 
expected.  We  wriggled  up  the  ugly  corkscrew  stream  in  three 
boats  ;  up  one  reach  we  had  the  wind  with  us,  in  the  next  it  would 
be  dead  against  us,  and  we  could  only  get  along  by  towing  and 
punting.  The  shoals  were  as  innumerable  as  ever  and  so  we  were 
constantly  crossing  the  river  along  a  course  mapped  out  by  twigs 
of  willow  stuck  in  the  mud.  However,  at  last,  at  two  in  the  after- 
noon of  Sunday  the  twenty-first,  we  reached  Tungchou — famous 
for  the  tragedy  of  the  capture  of  the  English  prisoners  in  1860 — 
and  outside  the  walls  of  the  city,  under  the  pleasant  shade  of  a 
great  tree  by  a  wayside  inn,  we  found  our  horses  and  an  escort 
which  had  been  sent  to  meet  us.  My  horse  was  a  grey  Arab  that 
had  been  the  charger  of  my  gallant  friend  Colonel  Fane  of  Fane's 
Horse  who,  like  my  friend  now  of  more  than  half  a  century,  Sir 
Dighton  Probyn,  had  played  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  war  of  1860. 

The  country  between  Tungchou  and  Peking  is  absolutely  flat, 
very  populous,  with  many  villages  and  endless  graveyards,  the 
most  sacred  of  all  objects  to  the  Chinaman.  There  are  plenty  of 
fine  trees  and  a  wealth  of  greenery  in  the  richly  cultivated  fields, 
so  that  I  was  rather  agreeably  surprised,  for  I  had  expected  nothing 
so  refreshing  to  the  eye  :  to  be  sure,  it  was  the  early  summer,  before 
the  scorching  heats  and  long  droughts  had  come  to  tan  the  crops  to 
one  uniform  brown.  All  of  a  sudden,  at  a  turn  of  the  road  close  in 
front  of  us,  quite  unsuspected,  invisible  until  we  were  immediately 
under  it,  I  saw  before  me  the  city  of  Peking,  the  city  of  my  dreams. 

There  at  last  were  the  grim,  dark  grey  walls  just  as  I  had  fancied 
them,  formidable,  frowning  ;  behind  them  the  mystery  of  centuries. 
At  intervals  rose  the  great  towers,  rearing  their  fantastic  roofs 
with  curved  eaves  above  huge  gates  in  and  out  of  which  the  yellow 
crowds  were  hurrying,  jostling,  eagerly  busy.  Coolies  carrying 
their  burdens  at  each  end  of  a  bamboo  pole  slung  across  one  shoulder, 
merchants,  small  gentry,  carts  tenanted,  some  by  mandarins  sur- 
rounded by  retainers  with  their  red-tasselled  caps,  others  by  much- 
painted  ladies  with  gaudy  ornaments  in  the  edifices  of  their 
quaintly-dressed,  shining  black  hair ;  old  women  in  charge  of 


342  Memories 

babies ;  a  prisoner  guarded  by  two  jailers,  his  head  protruding 
out  of  the  heavy  wooden  cangue  ;  the  beggars,  quite  worthy  of  their 
fame  for  filth  and  repulsiveness — just  such  a  crowd  as  existed 
in  Kang  Hsi's  time  two  hundred  years  ago,  nothing  changed,  save 
that  the  city  has  grown  a  little  more  shabby,  with  more  ruined 
spaces  caused  by  fire  and  neglect  hi  a  country  where  nothing  is 
ever  repaired ;  above  all,  a  whole  series  of  seemingly  familiar 
pictures — the  rice-paper  drawings  of  my  childhood  in  the  flesh  ! 

But  the  dust !  I  have  seen  dust  in  many  lands — one  of  the 
meannesses  of  Providence,  poor  Alfred  Montgomery  used  to  call 
it — notably  in  South  Africa  which,  in  that  respect  and  some  others, 
is  bad  to  beat ;  but  Peking  outdoes  them  all.  Fancy  riding  up 
to  your  horse's  hocks  in  a  fine  black  powder,  which,  when  the 
wind  blows  over  the  desert  of  Gobi,  pervades  everything  ;  insidious, 
ineluctable,  streaming  in  thin  rays  like  the  motes  in  a  sunbeam 
through  unsuspected  chinks  and  crevices  until  you  may  trace  your 
name  with  your  finger  on  any  single  thing  in  your  most  cunningly 
protected  room. 

In  one  of  those  dust-storms,  thick  as  a  London  fog,  I  have  known 
a  boat  leaving  a  ship  outside  the  Taku  forts,  forced  to  pull  round 
and  round  in  blind  circles  until  the  black  veil  should  lift,  or  rather 
fall,  and  daylight  once  more  break  through  the  gloom.  And  when 
the  rainy  season  comes,  then  the  streets  of  Peking  are  like  canals 
in  which  what  once  was  dust  is  now  a  noisome  Acherontian  slime. 

Peking  stands  in  need  of  forgiveness  for  much.  Smells  that 
must  be  smelt  to  be  believed  ;  sights  such  as  the  Beggars'  Bridge, 
which  are  sickening  horrors ;  squalid  houses,  suggesting  inde- 
scribable interiors,  for  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Po  Hsing* 
are  not  attractive  ;  streets  ill-paved  and  never  cleaned  ;  much  to 
offend  the  senses  at  every  step,  and  yet,  abuse  it  as  we  might,  Peking 
as  I  knew  it  fifty  years  ago  had  about  it  a  certain  mysterious  charm 
which  I  think  most  people  felt,  and  which  has  never  been  so  well 
described  as  by  Baroness  von  Heyking  in  "  Brief e  die  ihn  nicht 
erreichten."  How  cleverly,  without  any  attempt  at  description, 
by  a  few  magic  words  scattered  here  and  there,  she  makes  us  feel 
the  magic  of  the  old,  sad-coloured,  grey,  ruinous  city  ! 
*  Po  Hsing — "  the  hundred  names  "  =  the  ol 


CHAPTER   XVI 

PEKING 

WE  rode  into  Peking  at  the  Hata  Gate  and  threading  our 
way  through  the  throng,  soon  found  ourselves  outside  the 
Liang  Rung  Fu,  the  palace  of  the  Dukes  of  Liang,  which  was  the 
English  Legation,  separated  by  a  road  from  an  almost  dry  canal. 
The  great  gates  were  thrown  open  by  the  escort  man  on  duty  and 
we  rode  hi  to  receive  the  warmest  welcome  from  Mr.  Wade, 
the  charge  d'affaires,  who  later  became  Sir  Thomas  Wade,  K.C.B., 
G.C.M.G.,  and  British  Minister. 

I  soon  found  that  Sir  Frederic  Bruce  had  in  no  wise  exaggerated 
the  delight  that  was  to  be  had  in  Mr.  Wade's  society.  He  was 
at  that  time  a  man  of  forty-seven,  but  he  looked  older,  for  climate 
and  a  strenuous  life  during  a  quarter  of  a  century  into  which  he 
had  packed  more  advetitures  and  experiences  than  fall  to  the  lot 
of  most  men  hi  twice  the  time,  had  told  upon  him ;  but  in  char- 
acter he  was  as  gay  as  a  boy,  full  of  fun,  with  a  keen  sense  of  humour, 
and  an  excellent  story-teller,  a  talent  to  which  his  powers  as  a 
mimic,  of  which  I  have  already  spoken,  contributed  not  a  little. 

He  had  been  a  soldier  for  a  time,  like  his  father,  holding  a 
commission  in  the  42nd  Highlanders  and  afterwards  in  the 
g8th,  of  which  Colin  Campbell,  Lord  Clyde,  was  Colonel,  and 
which  was  to  take  part  in  the  first  China  war  in  1841.  On  the 
way  out  round  the  Cape,  being  already  an  expert  in  European  lan- 
guages, he  set  to  work  to  learn  Chinese.  It  was  a  colossal  task 
which  few  men  would  have  attempted  ;  indeed,  remembering  the 
very  scanty  books  which  then  existed,  I  can  hardly  conceive  how 
he  took  the  first  plunge.  During  the  war  he  was  of  the  greatest 

343 


344  Memories 

use  and  so,  when  peace  came,  he  was  appointed  interpreter  to  the 
garrison  at  Hong  Kong. 

The  part  which  he  played  in  all  subsequent  events  in  China 
till  the  end  of  the  war  in  1860  is  well  known,  though  it  was  not 
sufficiently  recognized  until  long  afterwards.  He  was  always 
building  nests  for  other  birds  to  lay  in.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
case  of  the  Maritime  Customs  of  China.  Out  of  ten  thousand 
well-informed  men  there  is  perhaps  not  one  who  does  not  believe 
that  the  Imperial  Customs  Service  of  China  was  formed  and 
organized  by  Sir  Robert  Hart.  Yet  that  is  not  the  case.  The 
service  was  started  and  organized  in  1854,  when  Hart  was  an 
unknown  quantity  and  just  leaving  Belfast  as  a  boy  of  nineteen, 
by  an  international  committee,  English,  French  and  American, 
Wade  being  the  English  representative,  and  the  working  man  of 
the  three ;  so  much  so  that  the  other  two,  feeling  that  they  were 
not  necessary,  retired,  leaving  the  Englishman  to  finish  the  job, 
and  carrying  into  practice  Lord  John  Russell's  dictum  that  the 
best  committee  is  a  committee  of  three,  of  whom  two  are  silent. 

As  soon  as  the  new  department  was  well  on  its  feet  Wade,  who  had 
no  mind  to  become  a  Chinese  official,  resigned,  and  became  Chinese 
Secretary  under  Sir  John  Bowring,  Governor  of  Hong  Kong.  He 
was  succeeded  as  Inspector-General  by  Mr.  H.  N.  Lay,  a  very  able 
man,  the  originator  of  the  Lay-Osborn  fleet  which  was  commanded  by 
Captain,  afterwards  Admiral,  Sherard  Osborn  in  1863,  a  scheme  which 
broke  down  owing  to  the  faithlessness  of  the  Chinese  Government. 
Lay,  clever  as  he  was,  had  the  misfortune  to  be  what  the  French 
call  a  mauvais  coucheur  in  affairs,  and  his  demands  upon  the 
Chinese  were  rather  more  peremptory  and  dictatorial  than  they 
were  prepared  to  admit ;  the  result  was  a  quarrel  and  Hart  was 
appointed  in  his  place.  There  were,  therefore,  two  Inspectors- 
General  before  Hart.  Nobody  denies  the  powers  of  the  latter 
as  an  organizer — least  of  all  did  Sir  Thomas  Wade  question  them  ; 
on  the  contrary  he  was,  perhaps,  Sir  Robert  Hart's  greatest 
admirer,  and  far  too  generous  even  to  hint  at  the  fact  that  the 
service  was  his  own  child.  I  did  not  share  his  admiration  of  his 
successor  and  we  had  many  arguments  upon  the  subject.  Had 
Wade,  who  was  loyalty  itself,  lived  to  see  the  Boxer  riots  and  read 


Peking  345 

the  two  articles  in  an  English  magazine  in  which,  when  the  trouble 
was  over,  Hart  professed  that  the  Boxer  rising  was  a  patriotic 
endeavour,  and  practically  advised  the  Boxers  to  begin  over  again 
with  the  proviso  that  they  should  have  a  care  to  be  better  equipped 
and  prepared,  I  think  that  he  would  have  come  round  to  my 
opinion. 

Sir  Robert  Hart  knew  that  his  articles  would  fly  under  the  seas 
by  cable ;  he  also  knew,  none  better,  the  effect  that  they  would 
produce  ;  how  sweet  his  words  would  be  to  the  Empress  Tsii  Hsi, 
to  her  eunuchs  and  the  whole  Court  over  which  they  ruled  and 
before  whom  he  bowed  the  knee  !  In  the  meantime  honours  were 
showered  upon  him.  He  was  made  a  baronet,  and  at  one  time  Lord 
Salisbury  who,  great  as  he  was,  never  quite  seemed  to  recognize 
the  importance  and  needs  of  China,  actually  appointed  him  to  be 
British  Minister  at  Peking,  a  post  which,  happily,  he  did  not  take 
up.  What  Lord  Salisbury  failed  to  see  was  that,  great  as  Hart's 
influence  with  the  Chinese  undoubtedly  was,  that  influence  would  die 
the  death  the  day  he  left  their  service  to  enter  ours.  They  would 
have  looked  upon  him  as  a  turncoat  who  had  wormed  himself 
into  their  secrets  in  order  to  use  them  on  our  behalf,  and  he  would 
have  had  far  less  influence  than  any  average  Englishman  promoted 
in  the  ordinary  course.  Nay  more  ;  it  might  conceivably,  indeed 
it  probably  would,  have  wrecked  the  Customs  service.  There  were 
not  lacking  mandarins  who  would  gladly  have  returned  to  the  old 
system  of  bribery  and  squeeze,  and  would  have  been  ready  to  do 
all  in  their  power  under  the  guise  of  patriotic  objections  to  get  rid 
of  an  organization  which  was  death  to  then*  methods  and  of  all  the 
foreigners  who  controlled  it.  The  cry  would  be  :  "  See  the  danger 
of  admitting  the  foreign  devils  to  our  councils."  Nobody  knew 
this  better  than  Hart  himself ;  moreover,  had  he  accepted  the 
post  he  would  have  been  making  a  great  monetary  sacrifice  and 
would  have  given  up  what  was  practically  an  autocracy  for  a 
position  which,  however  honourable,  would  have  placed  him  under 
an  oversight  to  which  he  had  long  been  a  stranger. 

Sir  Robert  Hart's  attitude  after  the  Boxer  affair  showed  how  he 
clung  to  the  goodwill  of  the  Tartar  Government,  and  how  little 
he  cared  what  his  countrymen  must  think  of  him  so  long  as  he 


346  Memories 

might  retain  the  favour  of  the  Empress  Tsii  Hsi — the  "  old 
Buddha  " — and  her  creatures. 

No  sketch  of  Peking,  however  slight,  is  possible  without  some 
mention  of  that  remarkable  man.  He  was  a  maker  of  history, 
and  may  have  been  a  good  friend  to  China.  To  Europe  he  certainly 
was  not ;  but  he  was  an  excellent  friend  to  Sir  Robert  Hart,  and 
to  those  whose  careers,  in  the  interest  of  his  own,  he  chose  to  push. 

The  British  Legation,  as  I  first  saw  it  before  it  was  pulled  about 
and  vulgarized,  was  certainly  a  very  striking  place,  with  huge 
courtyards  shaded  by  trees,  among  them  the  famous  lace-bark  pine* 
which  is  such  a  feature  in  Northern  China;  immediately  inside 
the  courtyard,  mounting  guard  over  a  picturesquely  roofed  stately 
hall  or  pavilion  open  to  the  winds  of  heaven,  were  two  great  stone 
shi-dzii  (lions),  grinning  vain  defiance  at  the  foreign  devils  who  had 
invaded  the  sanctuary  over  which  they  watched,  then  a  space, 
beyond  that  a  second  open  hall,  and  after  that  the  minister's 
quarters  decorated  in  the  most  classical  Chinese  fashion — the  last 
word  of  Pekingese  art. 

In  one  of  Lord  Elgin's  picturesque  despatches — to  Lord  Malmes- 
bury  if  my  memory  serves  me — but  that  is  immaterial — he  wrote 
that  he  could  not  better  describe  the  desolation  of  Nanking,  the 
ancient  Southern  Capital,  than  by  saying  that  while  riding  through 
the  city  he  flushed  a  cock-pheasant.  Had  he  been  as  well  ac- 
quainted with  China  then  as  he  was  afterwards,  he  would  have 
known  that  this  was  but  evidence  of  the  great  luxury  of  space 
which  the  Chinese  nobles  allowed  themselves — their  palaces  were 
surrounded  by  grounds  as  broad  as,  or  broader  than,  the  gardens 
of  suburban  villas  at  Putney  or  Richmond.  That  of  the  old  Dukes 
of  Liang  was  exceptionally  rich  in  elbow  room.  One  night — to 
follow  Lord  Elgin's  lead — one  of  our  escort  men,  who  kept  fowls 
and  had  been  sorely  tried  by  depredations,  shot  two  foxes  close  to 
his  quarters.  There  was  no  hunt  and  no  poultry  committee  at 
Peking,  so  he  had  to  take  the  law  into  his  own  hands.  There  was 
a  legend  that  even  wolves  had  been  seen  in  Peking  in  severe  winters. 
I  at  once  fell  in  love  with  the  old  Liang  Kung  Fu  and  I  was  savage 
when  the  great  open  halls — such  a  picture  of  the  past — were  bricked 

*  Pinus  Bungeana. 


Peking  347 

up  and  turned  into  chanceries  and  offices,  which  might  well  have 
been  placed  elsewhere.  No  wonder  the  very  stone  lions  tried  to 
growl !  The  beautiful  Liang  Rung  Fu  !  I  wonder  what  it  looks 
like  now  after  fifty  years  of  vandal  ministers  and  the  Boxer 
siege  ! 

Saurin  and  I  dined  with  Wade  that  night — an  excellent  dinner ; 
the  Chinese  are  first  rate  cooks — for  cooking  is  a  fine  art  in  which 
they  excel,  probably  because  it  does  not  involve  a  knowledge  ot 
perspective.  What  a  host  he  was  !  so  light  in  hand,  so  delicate 
in  his  wit,  so  full  of  conversation,  the  edge  of  which  was  sharpened 
by  reading  in  many  tongues.  For  Wade  was  no  dried  up  sino- 
logue— skilled  as  he  was  in  the  learning  of  the  Chinese,  he  had  kept 
himself  well  on  a  level  with  the  times  by  reading  all  that  was  best 
in  the  literature  of  the  West ;  but  the  memories  of  his  long  and 
varied  experiences  gave  to  his  talk  a  flavour  rich,  varied,  and  outside 
of  the  common. 

In  poetry  he  was  eclectic — devoted  to  the  great  classic  singers 
of  all  countries.  For  Tennyson  he  had  no  great  admiration — said 
he  was  the  sort  of  boy  who  would  be  sent  up  for  good  once  a  week 
— and  yet  I  have  known  the  tears  come  into  his  eyes  when  he  was 
quoting  a  stanza  from  the  poems  of  some  far  lesser  light.  If  he 
read  aloud  a  favourite  passage,  something  that  touched  his  heart, 
his  voice  would  break,  compelling  his  listener  to  feel  with  him. 
What  a  lovable  man  he  was  !  He  was  so  sympathetic,  so  modest 
in  talking  of  his  own  work,  so  generous  in  his  estimate  of  that  of 
others  ;  deeply  though  unostentatiously  religious,  brave  as  a 
Bayard,  devoted  to  duty,  Sir  Thomas  Wade  was  one  of  those  men 
in  whom  our  public  service  is  happily  rich,  men  who  for  a  mere 
pittance  as  compared  with  what  they  might  have  earned  in  other 
walks  of  life,  and  with  very  little  prospect  of  high  honours,  are 
content  to  pass  their  lives  in  exile,  making  light  of  health,  risking 
death  as  he  often  did,  and  sacrificing  to  the  interests  of  the  Empire 
all  the  attractions  of  social,  literary  and  artistic  life,  happy  only 
in  the  thought  that  they  are  spending  themselves  for  their  country. 

Wade  was  very  much  pleased  when  I  told  him  of  my  ambition 
to  learn  Chinese  and  promised  to  help  me  as  much  as  he  could,  and 
most  kindly  was  that  promise  fulfilled,  for  in  about  a  fortnight  he 


348  Memories 

brought  me  the  first  two  or  three  sheets  of  a  series  of  conversational 
exercises  which  afterwards  developed  into  the  "  Yii-yen  Tsu-erh 
chi,"  a  book  of  the  greatest  value. 

It  was  the  irony  of  fate  that,  essentially  a  scholar  by  nature, 
the  line  which  his  scholarship  had  taken  forced  him  into  an  official 
groove,  which  was  outside  the  scope  of  his  wishes  but  frorrl  which 
there  was  no  escape.  He  would  have  been  so  happy  working  at 
philology.  He  often  used  to  express  to  me  his  longing  to  be  at 
rest  in  some  congenial  seat  of  learning,  there  to  pursue  his  studies 
and  literary  labours.  His  wish  was  gratified  at  last ;  but  not 
before  sticking  manfully  at  his  post  he  had  become  minister  and 
K.C.B. ;  for  when  he  retired  in  1883,  he  settled  at  Cambridge, 
where  he  became  professor  of  Chinese,  with  no  pupils,  as  he  lamented 
to  me,  and  where  twelve  years  later  he  died.  One  of  my  greatest 
treasures,  which  never  leaves  me,  is  a  little  old  shabby  Bible  which 
he  gave  me  at  Peking  fifty  years  ago.  Dear  Wade  ! 

Not  long  after  my  arrival  in  Peking  the  great  heat  set  in,  and 
the  thermometer  rose  to  108°  in  the  shade  ;  the  smells  became 
intolerable — it  was  as  if  the  city  were  one  vast  shrine  in  honour  of 
Venus  Cloacina — it  was  time  to  fly  to  the  hills.  Saurin  and  I  had 
engaged  a  lovely  Buddhist  temple  called  Pi  Yiin  Ssu,  the  Temple 
of  the  Azure  Clouds,  and  thither  we  rode  out  one  fine  day  in  July, 
passing  over  a  beautiful  plain  studded  with  farmsteads  picturesquely 
shaded  by  tall  trees,  prosperous  villages,  and  burial  places,  the 
romantic  charm  of  which  apparently  compensates  the  Chinese 
peasant  in  death  for  the  dreariness  in  which  he  contentedly  passes 
his  life — a  mechanical  process  of  eating,  drinking  and  sleeping 
without  hope,  without  ambition,  without  more  thought  for  the 
morrow  than  is  involved  in  ploughing  and  sowing,  reaping  and 
threshing. 

The  trees  which  bear  witness  to  the  loving  care  with  which 
the  graveyards  are  tended,  and  make  the  villages  look  so  snug  and 
homelike,  were  a  delight.  Groves  of  poplars,  ailanthus,  the  aro- 
matic cedrela  and  willows,  cast  refreshing  lights  and  shades,  good 
to  look  upon.  Not  far  from  Pa  Pao  Shan  stands  a  noble  group 
of  the  maidenhair  tree,  Salisburia  adiantifolia,  while  the  cemeteries 
are  darkly  shaded  by  tall  Chinese  junipers,  and  the  weird  lace- 


Peking  349 

bark  pine,  Pinus  Bungeana,  whose  stems  and  branches,  richly 
embroidered  with  silver  patches,  gleam  ghostlike  among  the  more 
brilliant  foliage. 

Nestled  among  the  picturesquely  wooded  recesses  of  the  western 
mountains,  some  twelve  to  fifteen  miles  from? Peking,  are  a  number 
of  temples,  each  more  enchanting  than  the  last,  marvels  of  archi- 
tecture, decorated  with  all  the  skill  in  which  Chinese  art  excels. 
Here  at  least  there  is  no  decay — no  ruin.  Worm  and  weather  are 
kept  at  bay  by  the  offerings  of  the  faithful  who  come  to  Kwang 
Miao,  to  pay  homage  to  the  temple,  and  by  the  few  dollars  for 
which  the  priests  are  willing  to  hire  out  their  guest-chambers  to 
the  foreign  devils  seeking  a  refuge  from  the  pestilential  terrors  of 
the  urban  summer. 

Quite  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  these  was  the  Temple  of  the 
Azure  Clouds.  As  picturesque  as  its  name,  it  was  built  in  tiers 
on  the  mountain  side,  and  on  each  terrace  was  a  shrine — statues  of 
black  marble  and  white,  alti-rilievi  and  bassi-rilievi  portrayed 
kings  and  warriors,  gods  and  goddesses  and  fabled  monsters,  all 
of  rare  workmanship,  legends  writ  in  stone  that  the  study  of  a  life- 
time would  hardly  suffice  to  master,  and  all  set  in  a  surrounding 
of  rock  work,  fountains,  woods  and  gardens  before  which  an 
European  landscape  gardener  might  commit  suicide  in  sheer 
despair.  From  the  highest  of  these  terraces,  in  front  of  a  mar- 
vellous Indian  idol  with  ten  heads  in  tiers  of  three  surmounted  by 
one,  there  is  a  grand  panoramic  view,  with  the  sad-coloured  walls 
and  quaint  towers  of  Peking  in  the  dim  distance. 

Our  quarters  were  ideal.  Our  dining-room  was  an  open  pavilion, 
surrounded  by  a  pond  and  a  rockery  which  looked  as  if,  like  poetry, 
it  had  been  born  not  made,  feathered  with  ferns  and  clothed  with  a 
profusion  of  mosses  ;  high  trees  sheltered  us  from  the  scorching 
sun  and  a  pond  fed  by  an  icy  fountain  cooled  our  drinks  to 
perfection. 

Here  we  led  the  simple  life — rose  and  bathed  in  the  pond  soon 
after  daybreak — a  frugal  breakfast  at  eight — work  till  three — then 
dinner — after  that  a  ride  or  a  scramble  over  the  beauty-haunted 
mountains,  peering  into  the  homes  of  fairies  and  wood-nymphs 
and  heavenly  beings  ;  back  for  tea  at  eight  or  nine — a  smoke — and 


350  Memories 

then  bed,  to  be  awakened  long  before  the  sun  by  the  silvery  tink- 
ling of  the  bell  for  matins.  Sometimes  in  the  dead  hours  of  the 
night,  dreaming,  I  hear  the  music  of  a  little  bell  and  know  that 
I  am  being  wafted  across  fifty  years  of  memory,  over  twelve  thousand 
miles  of  sea  and  land,  to  the  Temple  of  the  Azure  Clouds,  where 
the  sacristan  is  as  of  old  calling  the  good  monks  to  morning 
prayer. 

I  had  my  teacher  with  me  and  was  hard  at  work.  There  is 
a  pretty  fable  which  tells  how  Confucius  and  his  disciples  in  sur- 
roundings not  more  romantic  than  these  used  to  work  on  into 
the  night,  studying  by  the  light  of  the  fire-flies.  Here,  too,  the 
pretty  creatures  swarm,  tiny  wandering  electric  lights,  winging 
their  bright  way  among  the  shrubs  and  trees  of  the  sacred  gardens ; 
but  we.  more  prosaic  than  the  sages,  are  content  to  work  by  day, 
letting  our  evenings  treasure  idleness.  What  more  fascinating 
study  can  there  be  than  that  of  a  strange  language  opening  out  a 
whole  vista  of  new  thoughts  and  ideas  ?  But  if  that  language  be 
of  the  East,  the  expression  of  all  the  poetic  imagery,  of  the  original 
conceptions,  of  the  unexpected  twists  and  turns  of  the  volutes  of 
the  Oriental  brain,  then  the  charm  is  complete.  There  is,  more- 
over, as  an  incentive  the  difficulty  :  at  each  step  gained  the  sense 
of  achievement,  of  victory.  In  the  absence  of  books  the  task  is 
well-nigh  hopeless. 

When  I  reached  Peking  there  was  one  much  thumbed  and  tattered 
copy  of  Medhurst's  dictionary  for  the  use  of  the  whole  Legation. 
Naturally  it  was  wanted  for  the  student  interpreters  :  Morrison's 
dictionary  was  out  of  print,  and  Giles,  whose  great  work  is  now  the 
authority,  had  himself,  so  far  as  China  was  concerned,  not  yet  been 
invented.  My  teacher,  a  quaint  little  man,  so  transparently  thin 
that  I  felt  almost  able  to  see  the  garlic  which  otherwise  so  richly 
asserted  itself,  knew  no  syllable  of  any  tongue  save  his  own,  so  it 
was  a  hard  matter  to  come  to  terms.  Substantives — a  table,  a 
chair,  a  cupboard — it  was  easy  enough  to  acquire ;  some  verbs 
are  capable  of  being  denoted  by  signs.  But  adjectives  !  How 
explain  that  you  wish  to  know  the  difference  between  a  good  table 
and  a  bad  ?  Great  was  my  joy  when,  one  fine  day,  Wade  pro- 
duced the  first  page  of  his  book  in  MS.  Then  matters  began  to 


Peking  351 

go  swimmingly,  and  by  the  end  of  the  summer  I  began  to  babble 
— very  childishly — but  we  must  totter  before  we  can  walk. 

Students  have  an  easier  time  of  it  now,  Wade,  Giles,  Hillier  and 
others  have  beaten  a  golden  road  for  them  and  there  are  plenty 
of  books.  Soon,  moreover,  we  hope  to  see  a  properly  equipped 
school  of  Oriental  languages  established  in  London,  so  that  a  young 
man  may  start  his  work  abroad  with  some  previous  equipment, 
however  slight,  to  help  him  in  overcoming  the  first  difficulties, 
saving  him  much  vexation  and  disheartening  delay. 

We  passed  the  days  of  our  cloistered  life  in  calm  and  peaceful 
contemplation  as  beseemed  sojourners  sheltered  by  a  Buddhist 
monastery.  The  studious  mornings  were  relieved  by  afternoon 
excursions  as  varied  as  they  were  delightful.  There  were  many 
interesting  temples  to  be  visited — among  others  a  fane  of  great 
sanctity  called  Wo  Fo  Ssu,  the  temple  of  the  Sleeping  Buddha,  a 
gigantic  figure  lying  down  with  a  pair  of  soft  velvet  boots  by  th-2 
couch  ready  to  be  put  on  when  it  should  please  the  Wise  One  to 
awaken  from  the  slumber  of  centuries.  Some  shrines  were  perched 
up  like  eagles'  nests  upon  almost  inaccessible  crags,  others  were 
easily  reached.  The  monks  and  the  poor  peasants  who  lived 
around  us  were  always  kind,  civil,  and  ever  welcoming  to  the 
red-haired  devils. 

All  had  some  element  of  attraction  ;  a  favourite  wandering 
was  through  the  romantic  gardens  and  grounds  of  what  had  been 
the  Summer  Palace — and  yet  it  was  sad  to  see  the  charred  ruins 
of  whjat  must  once  have  been  a  succession  of  scenes  each  one  more 
beautiful  than  the  last,  the  final  masterpiece  of  gorgeous  Oriental 
luxury  and  splendour.  The  Summer  Palace  really  consisted  of 
three  parks,  of  which  Yuen  Ming  Yuen,  "  the  round,  bright  garden," 
was  one,  and  the  name  became  among  foreigners  the  generic  name 
for  all  three.  The  park  that  we  used  to  visit  was  called  WTan  Shao 
Shan,  "  the  Hill  of  Ten  Thousand  Longevities."  It  was  strictly 
forbidden  ground,  but  the  soldiers  in  charge  were  a  poor  tatter- 
demalion crew,  and  a  silver  key  opened  the  gates.  The  third  park 
had  an  even  more  poetic  name  that  might  fit  an  extravaganza  in 
a  Western  theatre,  Yii  Chuan  Shan,  the  "  Hill  of  the  Fountain  of 
Jewels."  In  the  gardens  of  the  Hill  of  the  Ten  Thousand 


352  Memories 

Longevities  we  passed  from  court  to  court,  from  terrace  to  terrace, 
where  the  wicked  fire  had  hardly  spared  a  stone — carvings,  the 
loving  handiwork  of  consummate  artists,  had  all  fallen  in  scales, 
gradually  being  ground  to  powder,  lurking  places  for  scorpions  and 
lizards  and  centipedes.  Crazy  and  crank  were  the  steps  that  led 
from  one  level  to  another,  steps  that  had  once  been  trodden  by  the 
eunuch-guarded  beauties  of  the  Court  of  a  magnificent  Chien  Lung. 

All  was  one  tangle  of  climbing  plants,  brambles,  wild  vines  ; 
such  stones  as  remained  were  overgrown  with  mosses  and  lichens, 
silver-backed  ferns,  wild  asparagus  ;  strange,  sweet-scented  herbs 
peered  from  out  of  the  crannies  and  chinks.  Here  and  there  a  tiny 
pavilion,  and  just  one  little  bronze  shrine,  a  miracle  of  art,  which 
had  defied  the  devouring  flames,  only  served  to  accentuate  the  de- 
vastation. At  our  feet  lay  the  great  lake,  the  surface  almost 
smothered  with  the  pink  blush  of  the  lotus  flowers,  now  at  their 
best,  and  on  it  were  a  few  humble  fishermen  casting  their  nets  for 
such  poor,  muddy  fish  as  the  waters  of  North  China  can  produce. 
To  think  of  the  gaudy  court  that  once  housed  here  an  Emperor  like 
Solomon  in  all  his  pomp,  surrounded  by  ladies  "  all  glorious  within," 
gorgeously-clad  eunuchs,  officers,  ministers,  and  then  to  look  upon 
the  squalor  and  filth  of  its  present  guardians  ! — wretched,  half- 
starved,  hardly  clothed  creatures,  with  such  small  pay  as  should 
have  been  theirs  probably  no  more  than  an  arrear  never  to  be 
realized.  No  wonder  they  fell  and  betrayed  their  trust  before  the 
seduction  of  a  Mexican  dollar,  even  though  it  was  offered  by  a 
foreign  devil. 

By  the  beginning  of  August  the  great  heat  was  due  to  pass  away. 
There  came  a  mighty  thunderstorm,  like  the  bursting  of  giant  shells. 
Hailstones  as  big  as  pigeons'  eggs,  made  up  of  a  nodule  of  ice,  a 
layer  of  snow  and  then  an  outer  coat  of  ice,  came  rattling  down  hi 
volleys,  driving  scorpions  and  centipedes  and  other  horrors  to  take 
shelter  in  our  rooms.  In  three  hours  the  thermometer  fell  thirty 
degrees,  and  would  not  rise  again  till  the  following  summer.  It  was 
time  to  fly  back  citywards. 

In  the  two  or  three  days  that  it  took  to  pack  up  our  various 
belongings  the  torrents  of  rain  had  wrought  a  transformation  scene. 
The  dry  fields  and  banks  were  all  bright  with  a  young  green  growth, 


Peking  353 

and  in  the  meantime  the  giant  millet  had  sprung  to  a  height  of  some 
twelve  or  thirteen  feet,  so  that  we  rode  along  the  dense  paths  like 
Gulliver  in  the  fields  of  Brobdingnag,  guessing  at  our  way. 

Now  came  a  season  during  which  the  weather  was  such  a  joy 
that  life  was  worth  the  living  just  for  its  own  sake.  Those  of  us 
who  could  claim  an  immunity  from  official  work  for  two  or  three 
weeks  made  ready  for  a  trip  to  Mongolia  or  some  other  happy 
hunting  ground.  Saurin,  after  two  years,  had  well  earned  a  holiday, 
and  was  bound  with  another  man  for  an  expedition  beyond  the  Great 
Wall,  and  I,  having  a  few  days  at  my  disposal  before  the  next  mail, 
agreed  to  go  with  him  as  far  as  Ku  Pei  K6u,  the  great  pass  between 
China  and  Mongolia. 

Among  the  great  monuments  of  the  world  there  can  be  few  more 
striking  than  those  of  the  North  of  China.  Peking  itself,  that  grim 
and  grey  city  with  all  its  mysteries  and  tragic  secrets,  is  difficult  to 
beat.  The  Great  Wall  of  China  at  Ku  Pei  K6u,  a  most  lovely  spot, 
where  it  is  still  hi  good  repair,  overtopping  the  glorious  peaks  of 
the  mountains,  climbing  for  miles  and  miles  up  and  down  precipices 
where  there  would  seem  to  be  hardly  foothold  for  a  goat,  let  alone 
for  a  bricklayer  and  his  hod,  is  a  marvel.  In  places  which  I  saw 
once  when  I  followed  its  course  for  some  two  hundred  miles,  it  has 
now  fallen  under  stress  of  weather  and  neglect  into  mere  heaps  of 
rubble.  But  at  Ku  Pei  K6u  it  is  as  imposing  as  it  was  when  the 
Emperor  Shih  built  it,  some  two  hundred  and  thirty  years  B.C.,  to 
hold  the  Mongol  hordes  at  bay. 

It  is  perhaps  an  impertinence  to  speak  of  the  Tombs  of  the  Ming 
Emperors  in  the  same  breath  with  the  great  relics  of  Egyptian 
magnificence.  Here  we  can  count  at  most  five  centuries — there  as 
many  millenniums.  The  great  Pyramid  of  Cheops  and  the  Sphinx 
are  in  a  category  by  themselves  ;  and  yet  in  "  The  Thirteen  Tombs  " 
there  is  something  of  the  same  largeness  of  thought,  the  same  fight 
for  immortality.  About  five  miles  away  from  the  little  town  of 
Chang  Ping  Chou — famous,  or  rather  infamous,  as  the  scene  of  the 
torture  of  the  British  and  Sikh  prisoners  of  war  in  1860 — is  a  wide 
plain  surrounded  by  hill  scenery  of  great  beauty. 

In  the  midst  of  this  plain,  standing  out  in  solemn  isolation,  rises 
a  magnificent  stone  gateway,  designed  by  some  rarely  skilled  artist, 
VOL.  i.  23 


354  Memories 

by  far  the  finest  specimen  of  Chinese  architecture  that  I  ever  saw  ; 
altogether  a  most  imposing  work.  Some  way  beyond  this  wonder 
is  a  second  gateway  of  brick,  roofed  with  imperial  tiles,  leading  to  a 
large,  square  granite  building,  cruciform  inside,  in  which  is  a  colossal 
marble  tortoise,  bearing  a  high,  upright  tablet,  graven  on  both  sides 
with  inscriptions,  the  one  telling  how  the  tombs  were  built  for  the 
Ming  Emperors,  and  the  other  how  they  were  restored  by  the 
Emperor  Chien  Lung  in  the  eighteenth  century.  At  each  corner 
of  this  building  is  a  triumphal  column.  Then  comes  the  famous 
avenue  of  colossal  figures  in  double  pairs — the  one  pair  sitting,  the 
other  standing.  Lions,  Chih  Ling  (Kylins),  camels,  elephants, 
scaled  and  winged  dragons  wreathed  in  flames,  horses,  warriors  in 
full  armour,  with  breastplates  reminding  one  of  Medusa's  head, 
carrying  in  their  hands  swords  and  maces  ;  warriors  in  repose,  with 
their  swords  sheathed  and  their  hands  gravely  folded  on  their 
breasts ;  councillors ;  chamberlains.  Beyond  this  dumb  and 
motionless  procession,  which  looked  as  if  it  had  been  congealed  and 
turned  into  marble  by  some  magician's  wand,  a  broken  and  ruinous 
stone  road,  with  decayed  granite  and  marble  bridges,  leads  the  pil- 
grim in  melancholy  fashion  to  the  Chief  Temple,  or  Funeral  Palace, 
where  the  great  Emperor  Yung  Lo  lies  canonized  under  the  name 
of  Wen.  The  spot  is  one  of  rare  beauty,  for  hi  a  country  where 
even  the  humblest  peasant  must  needs  sleep  his  long  sleep  in  some 
choice  place,  the  Emperors  of  the  glorious  Ming  Dynasty  would 
naturally  choose  for  their  graves  a  sanctuary  worthy  of  their  race. 

Behind  the  great  shrine,  decorated  with  all  the  sumptuous  splen- 
dour of  which  Chinese  art  is  the  mistress,  is  a  hillock,  an  artificial 
mound  covered  with  trees  and  shrubs  ;  in  the  speaking  silence  of 
that  fair  retreat,  far  from  the  madding  crowd,  lie  the  remains  of  the 
Son  of  Heaven.  There  is  a  Chinese  proverb  which  says,  "  Better  a 
living  beggar  covered  with  sores  than  a  dead  Emperor."  I  wonder  ! 

We  rode  back  to  Chang  Ping  Chou,  our  horses  terrified  at  the 
great  images,  in  which  heaven  knows  what  horrors  they  saw.  It  was 
a  lovely  night,  and  the  harvest  moon  rose  in  full  glory.  After  supper 
I  was  impelled  to  go  back,  at  any  rate  as  far  as  the  mysterious 
Avenue  of  Statues.  I  felt  that,  like  Melrose,  it  should  be  visited  "  by 
the  pale  moonlight."  I  am  glad  that  I  had  that  inspiration.  When 


Peking  355 

I  reached  the  avenue  the  moonbeams  were  casting  their  spell  upon 
the  great,  silent,  motionless  procession.  Grim  and  gruesome  flickers 
were  playing  upon  the  marble  features,  showing  a  sort  of  life  in  death  ; 
near  the  further  end  a  vagabond  crew — in  England  we  should  have 
said  of  gipsies — had  encamped  for  the  night,  and  were  crouching 
round  their  fire,  smoking.  The  flames  cast  dancing  and  uncertain 
lights  and  shadows  upon  the  giant  figures  till  I  half  felt  as  if  they 
were  moving.  Far  away  in  the  gloom  were  the  thirteen  shrines, 
half  hidden,  nestling  among  the  dark,  pine-clad  hills — altogether  a 
weird  and  ghostly  scene  which  I  can  never  describe,  but  which  lives 
with  me  to-day,  after  all  these  years. 


The  event  of  our  lives  in  the  autumn  of  1865  was  the  arrival  of 
the  new  British  minister,  Sir  Rutherford  Alcock,  with  his  family, 
in  succession  to  Sir  Frederic  Bruce.  Sir  Rutherford  was  an  able 
man  who  would  probably  have  made  his  mark  in  any  profession 
and  in  any  position.  But  he  had  so  fitted  his  life  to  the  peculiar 
exigencies  of  China  and  of  the  public  service  in  that  country,  where 
he  had  been  for  many  years  a  Consul,  that  his  name  as  the  follower 
of  Sir  Frederic  was  indicated. 


VOL.  i  23* 


- 


CHAPTER     XVII 
1865 

PEKING 

MR.  ALCOCK'S  first  great  promotion  to  be  Consul-General 
in  Japan,  newly  opened  to  foreigners  by  Lord  Elgin's 
treaty  of  1858,  though  it  answered  well  enough,  was  based  upon  a 
mistake  of  the  English  Government,  which  was  under  the  delusion 
that  China  and  Japan  were  one  and  the  same  thing,  and  that  experi- 
ence in  the  one  country  must  of  necessity  specially  fit  a  man  to  take 
up  work  in  the  other.  It  was  like  what  Victor  Hugo  said  when  he 
was  asked  whether  he  had  ever  read  Goethe.  "  Non,  mais  j'ai  lu 
quelques  traductions  de  Schiller  ;  et  apres  tout,  Goethe-Schiller, 
Schiller-Goethe,  c'est  toujours  la  m^rne  chose."  Well,  China  and 
Japan  were  anything  but  "  la  meme  chose,"  and  perhaps  Mr. 
Alcock's  life  and  experiences  in  China  were  rather  a  hindrance  to 
him  than  otherwise,  as  they  undoubtedly  were  in  the  case  of  some  of 
the  first  merchants  who  established  themselves  there. 

However,  Mr.  Alcock  came  well  through  the  ordeal,  showing  great 
courage  and  determination,  and  never  allowing  any  affront  to 
England  to  pass  unnoticed.  Never  perhaps  did  he  show  more  moral 
courage  than  he  did  when  one  fine  day  in  writing  to  the  Japanese 
Government  he  signed  himself  Envoy  Extraordinary  and  Minister 
Plenipotentiary  instead  of  Consul-General,  with  the  intimation  to 
the  British  Foreign  Office  that  they  might  accept  or  reject  what  he 
had  done,  but  that  it  was  necessary  in  the  event  of  his  rejection  that 
whoever  should  be  appointed  should,  in  order  to  hold  his  own  both 
with  the  Japanese  Government  and  with  the  foreign  colleagues, 
hold  that  rank.  It  was  a  most  audacious  stroke  and  it  succeeded, 

356 


Peking  357 

because  he  was  quite  right,  but  it  probably  is  the  one  and  only 
case  of  a  man  accrediting  himself  as  minister  to  a  foreign  Power. 
Whether  he  also  named  himself  K.C.B.  history  records  not.  But 
at  any  rate  the  honour  was  most  deservedly  bestowed  upon  him. 

Sir  Rutherford  Alcock  was  a  man  of  great  ability  and  high  courage. 
During  his  official  life  in  the  Far  East  he  had  plenty  of  opportunities 
to  give  proof  of  both.  In  early  life  he  had  been  a  surgeon,  and  had 
been  attached  to  the  British  Legion  in  Spain,  where  he  earned  no 
little  reputation  for  a  skill  which  stood  him  in  good  stead  when  the 
temple  occupied  by  the  British  Legation  at  Yedo  (Tokio)  was 
attacked  by  Rdnins  in  July,  1861,  and  poor  Laurence  Oliphant 
and  others  were  so  badly  wounded.  Oliphant,  who  had  nothing 
but  a  hunting-crop  to  ward  off  the  cruel  sword-cuts,  must  have 
been  killed  had  it  not  been  for  the  merciful  beam  of  the  low,  narrow 
passage  in  which  he  was  fighting,  which  caught  the  worst  blows. 
For  long  years  afterwards  the  deep  cuts  on  the  woodwork  were  still 
visible,  but  the  last  time  I  was  in  Japan,  in  1906,  I  went  to  see  the 
place,  and  found  that  the  temple  authorities  had  removed  the  tell- 
tale beam. 

When  he  returned  from  the  Peninsula  he  went  back  to  his  profes- 
sion as  a  lecturer  ;  but  rheumatism,  due  to  exposure,  had  crippled 
his  hands  and  hindered  him  as  an  operator  ;  moreover,  he  was  bitten 
with  the  spirit  of  adventure,  and  in  1844  he  accepted  an  appoint- 
ment as  Consul  at  the  newly-opened  port  of  Fu  Chou.  But  it  was 
at  Shanghai  a  year  or  two  later  that  he  made  his  mark,  and  there  it 
was  that  he  achieved  what  was  the  most  successful  work  of  his  life 
in  the  establishment  of  the  municipality,  a  new  and  original  venture, 
needing  great  tact  and  judgment  in  order  to  avoid  international 
and  other  jealousies,  besides  involving  a  distinct  talent  for  organiza- 
tion. It  was  altogether  a  formidable  undertaking,  but  it  succeeded, 
and  laid  the  foundation  of  similar  institutions  throughout  the  Treaty 
Ports  of  the  Far  East. 

When  Sir  Rutherford  returned  to  China  as  Minister  he  was  far 
more  in  his  element  as  a  diplomatic  agent  than  he  had  ever  been  hi 
Japan.  He  had  an  intimate  knowledge  of  Chinese  affairs,  which  it 
is  hi  no  way  derogatory  to  say  that  he  had  not  of  Japanese  politics. 
In  Japan  he,  like  everybody  else,  was  under  the  influence  of  the  old 


358  Memories 

Dutch  fallacies,  and  he  did  not  fully  realize  the  relations  between 
the  Mikado  and  the  Tycoon.  The  great  scholars,  such  as  Satow  and 
Aston  and  others,  had  not  yet  pricked  the  bubble  and  babble  about 
spiritual  and  temporal  Emperors,  and  all  the  other  nonsense  of  those 
days.  Sir  Harry  Parkes  had  the  luck  to  profit  by  the  new-born 
knowledge.  Sir  Rutherford  was  the  victim  of  the  old  tradition. 
But  when  he  arrived  in  China  he  was  master  of  the  situation.  He 
was  thoroughly  at  home  and  up  to  every  move  on  the  board. 

He  was  a  kind  and  considerate  chief,  and  we  all  liked  him  except 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  mail-day.  Sir  Rutherford's  weakness  was 
the  idea  that  he  was  essentially  a  writer — he  would  have  been  a 
greater  man  if  he  had  never  written  a  book  about  a  country  which 
he  did  not  understand,  or  a  grammar  of  a  language  which  he  could 
neither  speak  nor  read  nor  write.  But  we  all  have  our  weaknesses  ; 
his  was  authorship.  The  despatches  which  he  used  to  write  con- 
tained excellent  stuff,  but  they  were  spoilt  by  being  spun  out  to 
interminable  lengths  of  impossible  verbiage.  To  copy  those 
effusions  with  the  thermometer  at  108°  in  the  shade,  with  a  double 
sheet  of  blotting-paper  between  my  hand  and  the  foolscap,  and  a 
basin  of  water  to  dip  my  fingers  in  from  time  to  time,  was  like  being 
private  secretary  to  Satan  in  the  nethermost  regions. 

At  the  Tsung  Li  Ya-men,  the  ministry  of  foreign  affairs,  Sir 
Rutherford  was  perfect.  However  knotty  might  be  the  point  which 
he  had  to  argue,  however  patent  the  trickery  which  he  had  to  resent, 
he  was  always  calm,  always  courteous,  and  so  the  Chinese  liked  him 
as  much  as  we  did.  He  certainly  was  persona  grata  with  the  Regent, 
Prince  Rung,  who  was  the  very  real  head  of  the  Tsung  Li  Ya-men.* 

The  Prince  Regent  was  at  this  time  a  tall,  well-favoured  man, 
shortsighted  and  pitted  with  smallpox,  which  in  Chinese  eyes  would 
be  no  hindrance  to  his  good  looks,  for  indeed  a  Chinaman  hardly 
thinks  of  himself  as  complete  until  he  has  "  put  forth  the  heavenly 
flowers."  Messrs.  Bland  and  Backhouse  quote  a  decree  of  the 
wretched  Emperor  Tung  Chih  in  which  he  announces  "  we  have 

*  Sir  Rutherford  retired  in  1871.  But  he  lived  for  many  years  after- 
wards in  London,  devoting  himself  to  all  manner  of  work  for  the  benefit  of 
the  poor,  but  especially  in  connection  with  hospitals,  for  which  his  early 
training  and  technical  knowledge  specially  fitted  him.  He  died,  greatly 
respected,  in  1897  at  the  age  of  eighty-eight. 


Peking  359 

had  the  good  fortune  this  month  to  contract  smallpox  " — in  the 
next  month  he  ascended  the  Dragon  and  was  wafted  on  high.* 
The  Emperor's  edict  might  serve  as  a  text  for  the  anti-vaccina- 
tionists,  nor  would  his  death  in  the  following  month  have  injured 
their  cause,  for  he  was  such  a  mass  of  disease  that  he  was  already 
foredoomed,  so  the  "  heavenly  flowers  "  were  not  by  themselves 
accountable  for  his  end. 

The  first  time  that  I  saw  Prince  Kung  was  in  the  month  of  May, 
a  few  days  after  my  arrival  at  Peking.  He  came  to  the  Legation 
to  discuss  business  with  Wade,  accompanied  by  two  other  ministers 
of  the  Tsung  Li  Ya-men.  The  Prince  was  in  high  spirits,  laughing 
and  joking  merrily  ;  he  was  always  good-humoured  and  genial, 
but  that  day  there  was  a  special  reason  for  his  cheerfulness  ;  he 
had  just  gone  through  one  of  those  alternate  storms  and  calms, 
often  incident  to  Oriental  life,  but  specially  frequent  where  the 
government  is  conducted  with  "  the  suspended  curtain  " — that 
is  to  say  by  an  Empress  who  may  not  be  seen.  To  me  he  was 
very  courteous  and  kind,  and  whenever  we  met  afterwards 
he  had  always  a  little  friendly  greeting  for  me,  never  failing  to 
chaff  me  about  my  single  eyeglass  which  used  to  furnish  him  with 
an  excuse  for  interrupting  an  awkward  discussion  and  so  give  him 
time  for  an  answer.  He  was  very  clever  in  availing  himself  of 
it ;  perhaps  that  was  the  reason  why  I  found  grace  in  his  sight. 

Hardly  more  than  a  stone's  throw  from  the  British  Legation 
are  the  walls  of  the  Forbidden  City.  Of  what  might  be  taking 
place  inside  that  sacrosanct  enclosure  we  knew  no  more  than  what 
that  most  venerable  of  all  publications,  the  Peking  Gazette,  was 
allowed  to  tell  us.  People  used  to  talk  with  well-informed 
superiority  of  coups-d'etat  and  Palace  intrigues,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  appearance  of  Messrs.  Bland  and  Backhouse's  book, 
"  China  under  the  Dowager  Empress,"  that  the  outside  world  was 
made  aware  of  the  intimate  history  of  that  masterful  woman's 
reign  ;  for  a  reign  it  was  throughout.  Her  co-Empress  was  a 
cipher  and  the  Emperors  whom  for  show's  sake  she  enthroned 
were  mere  puppets.  The  pages  of  that  roman  vecu  are  so  fasci- 
nating that  it  is  difficult  for  any  reader  to  put  the  book  down,  but 

*  "  China  under  the  Empress  Dowager,"  I.O.P.     Bland  and  E.  Backhouse. 


360  Memories 

to  those  who  have  lived  under  the  black  pall  of  ignorance  in  which 
the  foreign  community  of  Peking  was  shrouded  it  is  a  revelation. 

We  can  now  appreciate  the  heroic  courage  with  which  Tsu  Hsi, 
then  a  mere  girl  of  twenty-two,  defeated  the  conspiracies  of  the 
princes  who,  on  the  death  of  her  husband,  the  Emperor  Hsien 
Feng  in  1861,  took  her  child,  the  baby  Emperor,  from  her  and 
tried  to  usurp  the  Regency.  It  was  a  master-stroke  of  craft  in  so 
young  a  woman  to  paralyse  the  conspirators  by  purloining  the 
seal  without  the  impression  of  which  no  nomination  to  the  throne 
was  legitimate.  We  know  how  Prince  Kung,  the  intimate  personal 
enemy  of  the  plotters,  and  the  handsome  young  guardsman,  Jung 
Lu,  her  kinsman,  her  playmate,  and  through  life  her  more  than 
trusty  friend,  came  to  the  rescue,  and  we  can  understand  how  it 
was  that  the  former,  her  brother-in-law,  though  he  had  to  go  through 
alternations  of  favour  and  disgrace,  was  always  summoned  back 
in  moments  of  storm  and  stress  when  she  needed  his  help  and  advice. 

When  I  was  at  Peking  Tsu  Hsi  was  a  mystery  ;  no  foreigner 
even  knew  what  was  her  origin — some  went  so  far  as  to  say  that 
she  was  a  mere  slave  girl ;  as  a  matter  of  fact  her  birth  is  now 
known*  to  have  been  of  the  highest.  She  was  a  lady  of  the  Yeho- 
nala  clan,  a  family  descended  from  Yangkunu,  the  great  Manchu 
Prince  whose  daughter  married  the  founder  of  the  Manchu  Dynasty 
in  China.  She  was  therefore  of  right  royal  descent,  and  her 
pedigree  was  without  a  stain,  though  her  father  had  held  no  higher 
rank  than  that  of  an  officer  in  one  of  the  eight  banner  corps. 

The  first  wife  of  the  Emperor  Hsien  Feng  died  before  he 
ascended  the  Dragon  throne.  When  the  period  of  mourning  for 
his  father,  Tao  Kwang,  came  to  an  end  in  1852,  a  number  of 
maidens  from  the  chief  Manchu  families  were  sent  for,  out  of  whom 
the  widow  of  the  dead  monarch  was  to  choose  a  certain  number 
suitable  for  the  harem  of  the  Son  of  Heaven  ;  among  them  were 
the  two  ladies  who  as  Tsu  An  and  Tsu  Hsi,  Dowager  Empress  and 
Empress  Mother,  were  to  play  such  conspicuous  parts  in  Chinese 
history. 

Those  who  are  interested  in  studying  the  last  phase  of  the  great 
Ching  Dynasty  must  seek  its  story  in  Messrs.  Bland  and  Backhouse's 

*  See  Messrs.  Bland  and  Backhouse* 


Peking  361 

pages.  It  will  repay  them.  Few  princes  have  left  this  world  in 
more  dramatic  fashion  than  the  Empress  Tsu  Hsi — the  Old  Buddha, 
as  she  loved  to  be  called — whose  last  bequest  to  her  people  was 
the  advice  never  again  to  allow  a  woman  to  exercise  the  Supreme 
Power,  and  not  to  allow  the  enduchs  of  the  Palace  to  interfere  in 
affairs  of  State  ;  she  who  had  been  ruled  by  such  scoundrels  as 
the  two  favourite  eunuchs,  Li  Lien  Ying  and  An  Te  Hai ! — a  mass 
of  contradictions  to  the  last.  That  she  was  a  woman  of  amazing 
ability  is  certain  ;  competent  authorities  have  praised  her  scholar- 
ship and  held  up  her  edicts  as  models  of  style  ;  she  was  witty, 
though  her  wit  sometimes  was  cruel,  as  when  she  told  the  murder- 
ous Governor  of  Tai  Yuan  Fu  that  "  the  price  of  coffins  was  going 
up" — a  hint  to  commit  suicide  without  delay,  lest  worse  befall 
him  ;  as,  in  spite  of  her  protection,  it  ultimately  did. 

She  was  tyrannical  and  vindictive,  yet  she  contrived  to  inspire 
affection  and  to  persuade  the  people  that  she  was  kind-hearted  ; 
she  was  false  and  treacherous,  but  her  power  of  attraction  was 
supreme  and  the  love  between  Jung  Lu  and  herself,  dating  from 
boy-and-girl  days,  long  before  she  entered  the  Palace,  never 
waned.  Unless  she  has  been  much  maligned  she  had  much  the 
worst  side  of  the  character  of  Catherine  the  Great ;  like  our  own 
Elizabeth  she  was  terrible  in  her  rage,  irresistible  in  her  gentler 
moments.  Altogether  a  woman  of  infinite  variety,  a  scholar, 
a  stateswoman,  and  an  artist. 

The  edict  in  which  she  published  to  the  world  her  degradation 
of  Prince  Kung  in  April,  1865,  is  like  an  ^Eschylean  chorus. 
Success  followed  by  insolence  ;  insolence  by  Nemesis.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  his  somewhat  abrupt  manner  might  have  been 
very  offensive  to  august  ears  ;  but  if  it  be  true  that  he  told  the 
two  Empresses  that  if  they  sat  upon  their  thrones  behind  the 
curtain  it  was  because  he  had  so  willed  it,  there  is  no  wonder  that 
an  Empress  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  a  Tudor  queen  should  have 
refused  to  brook  such  language  as  that.  In  a  month,  however,  the 
necessary  man  was  once  more  called  into  favour,  and  then  it  was 
that  I  first  saw  him. 

I  had  a  great  admiration  for  Prince  Kung.  It  was  impossible 
not  to  be  attracted  by  his  bonhomie  and  his  pleasant  manner.  To 


362  Memories 

me,  as  I  have  said,  he  was  always  specially  courteous.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  he  had  any  greater  love  of  the  foreign  devils  than  the 
rest  of  his  countrymen  ;  but  if  he  hated  us  he  had  the  wisdom 
to  mask  his  dislike.  The  documents  which  successive  crises  have 
brought  to  light  have  taught  us  many  a  lesson.  Your  Chinese 
gentleman  is  a  great  scribe,  and  rather  than  suffer  his  pen  to  be  idle 
he  will  console  himself  in  difficult  moments  by  writing  down 
voluminous  indiscretions ;  f\  and  so  it  has  become  pretty  evident 
that  even  those  among  the  Chinese  statesmen  who  professed  the 
greatest  friendship  for  us  in  their  hearts  hated  us.  The  Empress 
Tsu  Hsi  herself,  when  she  coaxed  and  talked  soft  nonsense  to  the 
wives  of  the  Foreign  Ministers,  told  Jung  Lu  that  she  knew  how  to 
win  them  to  her  side  with  rich  gifts  and  honeyed  words.  How  she 
fooled  the  dear  ladies  to  their  hearts'  content  is  well  told  by  Messrs. 
Bland  and  Backhouse.  Nor  is  this  feeling  to  be  wondered  at. 
We  were  self-invited  guests  in  her  country  ;  we  needed  the  trade, 
export  and  import,  of  the  Chinese  who,  until  we  came,  were  self- 
sufficing  ;  opium  and  grey  shirtings  notwithstanding,  in  their 
view  we  brought  nothing  but  trouble  upon  them. 

Apart  from  his  undoubted  charm  of  manner,  however  much  or 
however  little  it  might  mean,  the  Prince  was  a  man  of  undoubted 
talent  and  strength  of  character.  He  was  a  very  young  man 
in  1860,  not  more  than  twenty-three  or  twenty-four  years  old, 
and  utterly  inexperienced  in  affairs,  when  his  brother,  the  Emperor 
Hsien  Feng,  who  was  dying  by  inches,  bowed  to  the  storm  of 
foreign  invasion  and  fled  to  Jehol,  leaving  him  in  Peking  as  his 
representative,  with  full  powers  to  carry  on  the  Government.  It 
was  a  fateful  moment.  The  Allies  were  victorious.  Yuen  Ming 
Yuen,  the  summer  palace,  was  in  flames ;  the  foreign  barbarians 
were  in  possession  of  the  Anting  Men,  the  northern  gate  of  Peking  ; 
a  number  of  prisoners,  among  them  Parkes  and  Loch,  were  in  the 
hands  of  the  Chinese,  by  whom  they  had  been  shamefully  treated ; 
Prince  Rung  realized  the  position,  and  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life 
handed  over  the  prisoners  to  their  chiefs.  He  acted  in  the  nick  of 
time.  Hardly  had  he  done  so  than  a  messenger  arrived  post  haste 
from  Jehol,  ordering  the  instant  execution  of  the  prisoners.  Had 
Prince  Rung  carried  out  the  Emperor's  edict  it  is  difficult  to  say 


Peking  363 

what  the  consequences  would  have  been.  Certainly  Peking  would 
have  been  razed  to  the  ground,  and  the  Tartar  dynasty  would  have 
been  exterminated  half  a  century  before  its  knell  was  finally  rung. 

Prince  Rung  died  in  1898.  Had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer 
I  believe  that  his  sage  advice  and  statesmanship,  joined  to  the 
persistent  warnings  of  Jung  Lu,  would  have  saved  the  Empress 
from  the  fatal  step  which  she  took  of  fostering  the  Boxer  outrages, 
and  the  further  disgrace  of  disavowing  and  executing  the  very  men 
with  whom  she  had  conspired,  and  whom  she  had  egged  on  to  a 
doom  from  which  she  did  not  feel  herself  powerful  enough  to  save 
them.  But  she  listened  to  the  dupes  and  ruffians  who  believed  in 
the  magic  rites  of  the  Boxers,  and  in  spite  of  all  her  blandishments 
to  the  easily-gulled  Legation  ladies  before  and  after,  did  all  in  her 
power  to  urge  on  the  destruction  of  the  besieged  ministers,  even 
when  she  was  sending  them  presents  of  fruit  and  sweetmeats  ! 

In  vain  did  Jung  Lu  try  to  impress  upon  her  that  the  bombard- 
ment "  was  worse  than  an  outrage,  it  was  a  piece  of  stupidity  ;  "* 
had  the  Prince  been  alive  he  no  doubt,  with  forty  more  years' 
experience  of  affairs  to  his  credit,  would  have  grasped  the  situa- 
tion in  1900  as  he  did  in  1860,  and  her  two  most  trusted  advisers 
would  have  saved  the  old  Buddha's  face.  No  woman,  empress 
or  peasant,  ever  had  a  more  devoted  friend  than  she  had  hi  Jung 
Lu — but  single-handed  he  was  no  match  for  the  army  of  scoundrels 
and  eunuchs  by  whom  she  was  gulled. 

Prince  Rung's  signature  was  peculiar.  I  believe  that  it  honestly 
represented  his  character.  He  did  not  sign  his  name  or  his  title, 
but  "  Wu  ssu  hsin,"  "  no  private  heart,"  i.e.  "  disinterested." 

Prince  Rung's  right-hand  man  was  Wen  Hsiang,  a  Tartar 
statesman  of  great  ability,  whom  it  was  a  pleasure  to  meet.  Like 
his  chief,  he  was  always  conciliatory  and  prepossessing ;  had  he 
had  the  Prince's  strength  and  moral  courage  he  might  have 
achieved  great  things — but  there  he  broke  down.  The  two  other 
ministers  whom  we  met  the  oftenest  were  Tung  and  Heng  Chi — 
the  former  a  portly,  good-humoured  gentleman  with  a  great  repu- 
tation as  a  man  of  letters,  who  had  turned  into  Chinese  verse  a 

*  Bland  and  Backhouse;  cf.  "  C'est  pis  qu'une  faute,  c'est  une  erreur" 
(Talleyrand  on  the  murder  of  the  Due  d'Enghien). 


364  Memories 

prose  translation  by  Wade  of  Longfellow's  Psalm  of  Life  ;  the 
latter  an  old  beau,  his  tail  dyed  and  eked  out  with  false  hair  as 
sedulously  as  the  head-dress  of  an  aged  Court  dame  in  Europe. 
He  was  very  carefully  attired,  generally  in  a  robe  of  pearl-grey 
silk  turned  up  with  blue.  Sir  Plume  himself  was  not  more  justly 
vain  of  his  amber  snuffbox  than  Heng  Chi  was  of  his  tiny  snuff 
bottle  with  its  emerald  green  jade  stopper,  and  the  priceless  bead 
of  the  same  from  which  his  peacock  feather  hung  ;  his  red  button 
was  of  "  baby-face "  coral,  and  as  for  the  pipe,  chopsticks  all 
studded  with  seed  pearls,  and  other  small  treasures  which  were 
hidden  in  the  recesses  of  his  velvet  boot  and  the  delicate  sugar- 
plums and  restorative  drugs  which  he  produced  from  the  same 
receptacle,  they  baffled  description.  A  dear  little  old  man  withal, 
merry  and  well  preserved,  whom  we  all  treated  with  great  respect 
in  gratitude  for  his  kindness  to  Parkes  and  Loch  when  in  their 
hideous  captivity  they  stood  sorely  in  need  of  a  friend.  Was  he 
so  very  fond  of  the  barbarian  ?  Listen  ! 

M.  de  Mas  was  Spanish  Minister  at  Peking.  He  had  negotiated 
a  Treaty  which  for  many  months,  even  two  or  three  years,  could 
not  be  ratified  on  account  of  the  many  changes  of  ministry  at 
Madrid.  At  last  the  ratification  came,  and  M.  de  Mas,  before 
going  home,  went  to  pay  a  farewell  visit  to  His  Excellency  Heng 
Chi.  Now  the  said  Excellency,  being  past  seventy  years  of  age, 
had  a  little  boy,  some  four  or  five  years  old,  of  whom  he  was  in- 
ordinately proud — he  was  the  apple  of  his  eye.  The  polite  Spaniard, 
knowing  this,  asked  to  see  the  wonderful  product.  Highly  flat- 
tered, Heng  Chi  sent  for  the  child,  who  arrived  with  his  thumb  in 
his  mouth,  after  the  manner  of  all  children,  Asiatic  as  well  as 
European.  "  Make  your  bow  to  His  Excellency  !  "  said  the  proud 
father.  Not  a  sign.  The  order  was  repeated,  not  once  but  twice. 
At  last  the  little  creature,  taking  its  thumb  out  of  its  mouth, 
solemnly  uttered  the  street  cry,  "  Kwei  tzu  !  "  ("  Devil !  ")  The 
intimate  education  of  the  harem  was  revealed,  and  poor  old  Heng 
Chi  was  smothered  in  confusion.  There  is  a  general  idea  that  all 
high  mandarins  are  great  scholars.  That  is  not  always  the  case. 
Our  old  dandy  friend,  for  instance,  was  as  little  of  a  grammarian 
as  Mrs.  Squeers.  Nevertheless  he  had  all  the  Chinese  gentleman's 


Peking  365 

reverence  for  letters,  and  kept  a  learned  secretary  to  read  to  him 
and  keep  him  up  to  the  mark. 


The  terrible  part  of  winter  at  Peking  is  the  drought ;  month 
after  month  the  Emperor  goes  to  the  Temple  of  Heaven  to  pray 
for  rain  or  snow ;  month  after  month  the  god,  whoever  he 
may  be,  shuts  his  ears  as  fast  as  Ulysses'  ship's  crew.  The  cold 
is  intense,  witness  the  frozen  river  and  sea  ;  the  fierce  wind,  tear- 
ing over  the  desert  of  Gobi,  dries  men  up  till  their  skins  become 
parched,  tight  and  powdery  ;  their  lips  are  chapped  and  the  black 
dust,  that  scourge  of  Northern  China,  seems  to  penetrate  the  very 
marrow  of  their  bones.  Russia  was  not  colder  ;  but  in  Russia  we 
had  the  brightness  and  the  kindly  snow,  and  the  tinkling  of  the 
sleigh  bells  gave  the  winter  life  and  gaiety.  In  Peking  the  winter 
was  as  gloomy  as  remorse.  All  communication  with  the  outer 
world  was  cut  off.  Twice  in  the  course  of  rather  more  than 
three  months  we  received  mails  brought  across  Siberia  and  the 
frozen  Baikal  lake.  We  could  not  help  feeling  that  we  were  caught 
like  rats  in  a  trap.  Had  the  people  chosen  they  could  have  made 
short  work  of  us,  and  every  now  and  then,  by  way  of  cheering  us, 
our  Chinese  writers  would  bring  in  reports  that  on  such  and  such 
a  day  there  would  be  a  rising  against  us.  To  these  uncomfortable 
rumours  we  paid  no  heed.  Indeed,  in  spite  of  some  discomfort 
and  the  absence  of  "  fireside  enjoyments,  home-born  happiness," 
I  passed  the  time  cheerily  enough.  I  had  plenty  to  do,  and  was 
getting  on  with  the  language,  which  I  used  to  practise  in  fair 
weather  upon  the  curio  dealers  of  the  Chinese  city. 

There  was  in  especial  a  delightful  little  man,  a  bookseller  in  the 
Liu  Li  Chang — the  Paternoster  Row  of  Peking — who  was  a  perfect 
cyclopaedia  of  knowledge  in  all  that  concerned  Chinese  art ;  be- 
sides his  rare  books  he  always  had  a  very  small  but  very  choice 
collection  of  beautiful  objects — pottery,  jade,  crystal,  cloisonne 
enamel,  pietra  dura  ;  and  at  the  feet  of  that  Gamaliel,  I  used  to 
listen  to  much  antiquarian  lore  from  a  teacher  who  loved  his  sub- 
ject and  Tevered  it.  Over  a  cup  of  tea,  or  in  summer  of  an  iced 
decoction  of  date-plum  juice,  he  would  spin  stories  by  the  hour. 


366  Memories 

He  would  tell  how  the  last  potter  of  the  Lang  family  died  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  before,  and  how  his  secrets  and  recipes, 
inimitable  treasures,  were  buried  with  him  ;  how  the  Ming  Emperor 
Ching  Tai  (A.D.  1450)  would  with  his  own  sacred  hands  work  at 
cloisonne  enamel,  called  after  him  Ching  Tai  Lan — the  blue  of 
Ching  Tai;  how  in  the  days  of  Chien  Lung  (1736-1796), 
the  magnificent,  a  great  patron  of  art,  if  a  fine  piece  of  crystal  or 
jade  were  brought  in  as  tribute  from  the  western  mountains,  a 
committee  of  taste  would  sit  to  appraise  its  merits,  deciding  what 
shape  should  be  given  to  it  and  to  what  artist  it  should  be  en- 
trusted. A  wonderful  little  man  with  a  huge  belly,  which,  as  all 
men  know,  is  the  seat  of  learning,  and  in  his  case  was  choke  full 
of  it. 

How  pleased  my  small  dilettante  friend  would  have  been  if  he 
could  have  foreseen  that  two  or  three  specimens  that  came  from 
him  would  find  a  home  in  the  British  Museum  !*  Not  that  he  ever 
heard  of  such  a  place,  but  his  ideas  were  out  of  all  proportion  to 
his  stature,  and  the  thought  of  a  national  collection  of  works  of 
art  would  have  appealed  to  his  large  and  aesthetic  soul. 

"  Que  la  vie  d'un  diplomate  serait  agreable  sans  les  chers 
collegues  !  "  once  exclaimed  an  eminent  ambassador.  Peking  in 
1865-6  would  have  fitted  his  Excellency  to  a  nicety.  We  were 
a  very  small  body,  and  other  foreigners,  save  a  few  missionaries, 
were  there  none.  General  Vlangaly,  the  Russian  Minister,  was 
always  very  friendly.  We  used  to  go  prowling  in  all  sorts  of  out- 
of-the-way  corners  of  the  Chinese  city  searching  out  works  of  art. 
Were  we  always  quite  honest  with  one  another  on  those  excur- 
sions ?  Perhaps  we  were  more  so  when  we  were  taking  a  con- 
stitutional on  the  broad  tops  of  the  mighty  walls  which  separate 
the  two  cities,  when  the  General  would  expatiate  by  the  hour 
on  the  great  qualities  of  the  object  of  his  admiration,  Sir  Frederic 
Bruce.  There  I  could  cry,  Amen. 

Had  there  been  any  of  what  is  called  "  rank,  beauty  and 
fashion  "  at  Peking,  its  favourite  promenade  would  have  been 
the  wall.  There  we  found  peace  and  quiet, — for  the  public  in- 

*  Bought  at  my  sale  by  my  old  friend  Sir  Augustus  Franks,  and  uovr  in 
the  collection  bequeathed  by  him  to  the  British  Museum. 


Peking  367 

vaded  it  not, — and  comparative  immunity  from  the  demon  dust. 
It  was  wonderful  to  look  over  the  great  city — the  two  great  cities 
— to  gaze  upon  the  roofs  of  the  inviolable  Palace  Ground ;.  and 
wonder  what  mysteries  they  were  hiding.  At  the  southern  corner 
of  the  wall  were  the  beautiful  astronomical  instruments,  master- 
pieces in  the  interest  of  which  European  science  entered  into  a 
happy  alliance  with  Chinese  art — the  great  Emperor  Rang  Hsi 
with  the  Jesuit  Father  Verbiest — in  order  to  furnish  after  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  a  prey  for  Prussian  burglary.  At  inter- 
vals rose  the  great  fantastic  towers,  threatening,  cruel — suggest- 
ing unspeakable  horrors ;  for  in  one  of  them,  as  we  were  told, 
dwelt  the  chief  executioner,  like  Mauger  the  headsman  in  George 
Cruikshank's  etching,  watching  over  the  Five  Lords — broad  choppers 
like  butchers'  instruments,  on  the  handle  of  each  of  which  is  carved 
a  grotesque  human  head. 

Those  who  have  wandered  on  the  walls  in  the  witching  hour* 
of  night  are  said  to  have  heard  the  sound  of  weird  and  unearthly 
strains,  songs  in  which  the  Five  Lords  are  wont  to  celebrate  the 
bloody  deeds  in  which  for  centuries  and  more  they  have  played 
their  part.  Pray  that  you  be  not  dealt  with  by  the  Benjamin  of 
the  Five  Lords,  for  he  is  still  young  and  skittish,  not  more  than 
two  hundred  years  old,  loving  to  dally  and  toy  with  the  heads 
of  his  victims,  unlike  his  more  reverend  elders  who  will  strike 
off  your  head  at  one  blow,  impressed  with  the  serious  nature  of 
their  duties. 

No  two  countries  had  during  the  sixties  so  living  an  interest 
in  China  as  England  and  Russia;  with  England  it  was  a  question 
of  commerce  ;  with  Russia  of  commerce  and  frontier  combined. 
Ever  since  Peter  the  Great's  time  there  had  been  Russian  missions, 
political  and  religious,  in  Peking — partly  in  the  interests  of  the 
Albazines,  a  small  Russian  colony  on  the  Amur  transplanted  to 
Peking,  who  long  since  adopted  the  Chinese  language,  dress  and 
customs,  but  retained  their  religion.  The  northern  mission  was 
under  the  Archimandrite  Palladius,  the  southern  under  the 
Minister.  That  is  how  it  happened  that  when  the  Allied  Armies 
were  before  Peking  in  1860  the  then  Minister,  General  Ignatieff, 
admiringly  celebrated  by  the  Turks  afterwards  when  he  was 


368  Memories 

Ambassador  at  Constantinople  for  his  talent  in  concealing  the 
truth,  tried  to  persuade  Prince  Rung  that  if  only  the  Prince  would 
yield  to  Russia's  requests,  he  would  be  able  to  ward  off  all  danger 
by  interceding  with  Lord  Elgin.  Prince  Kung,  young  and  new  to 
affairs  as  he  was,  saw  through  the  trick  ;  "  Codlin's  the  friend,  not 
Short,"  was  no  use,  the  fly  had  no  mind  to  enter  the  spider's 
parlour. 

Years  after  I  met  General  Ignatieff  at  Contrexeville.  How 
clever  he  was,  and  how  well  he  gauged  the  Chinese  !  It  was  at 
the  moment  when  the  great  Li  Hung  Chang  was  in  Europe.  Lord 
Salisbury  flirted  with  him,  and  in  the  interest  of  Krupp  and  other 
firms  the  Kaiser  made  his  children  play  about  the  great  mandarin's 
knee  and  call  him  "  Uncle  Li."  But  it  was  all  no  use  ;  Li  went 
back  to  China  and  not  a  sixpenny  order  was  given.  How  General 
Ignatieff  and  I  laughed  over  the  daily  reports  of  all  that  sordid, 
commercial  and  absolutely  barren  love-making  ! 

The  Archimandrite  Palladius,  who  had  been  in  Peking  ever  since 
1840,  told  me  that  he  had  never  had  any  difficulty  in  holding 
intercourse  with  the  people.  The  intermarriage  of  the  Albaeines 
with  the  Chinese  had  led  to  many  conversions,  and  he,  with  the 
help  of  his  three  subaltern  priests,  was  always  able  to  keep  up  his 
services  and  schools. 

There  was  no  French  Minister ;  M.  De  Bellonet  was  charge 
d'affaires,  a  clever,  very  agreeable  man  who  hated  China  and 
the  Chinese,  and  cursed  the  day  on  which  his  fate  sent  him  out 
of  Europe.  His  chief  delight  was  in  plaguing  the  ministers  of 
the  Tsung  Li  Ya-men.  Rarely  he  left  his  own  house  ;  when  he 
did  it  was  either  to  "  flanquer  une  pile  "  at  the  ministers,  or  to 
pay  some  inevitable  visit  of  ceremony  which  he  loathed.  I  asked 
him  once  why  he  never  went  to  see  any  of  the  beautiful  and  curious 
sights  in  and  around  Peking.  "A  quoi  bon  ?  "  he  answered. 
"  Lorsque  je  rentrerai  a  Paris  je  dirai  a  mes  amis  que  j'ai  vu  tout 
cela  ;  $a  revient  au  meme." 

One  day  I  went  to  call  upon  him  and  found  him  with  a  small 
gang  of  coolies  making  some  improvements.  I  asked  him  how 
he  managed  to  give  his  orders  without  knowing  a  word  of  Chinese. 
He  answered  :  "  Mon  cher  ami,  j'ai  ici  le  meilleur  interprete  du 


Peking  369 

monde — le  Professeur  Bambou  " — and  with  that  the  little  man 
viciously  twirled  a  huge  walking-stick.  The  coolies  trembled. 

He  was  very  amusing  and  I  liked  him  much,  and  was  sorry 
when  he  made  the  great  mistake  of  his  life  through  not  realizing 
the  farness  of  the  cry  to  Loch  Awe.  There  was  missionary  trouble 
in  Corea.  De  Bellonet  felt  certain  that  if  he  started  a  punitive 
expedition  he  would  be  supported  by  the  Church  and  the  Empress 
Eugenie.  Promotion  a  certainty.  But  Corea  is  a  long  way  off; 
it  was  further  off  in  those  days  than  it  is  now.  My  poor  friend 
was  disavowed,  and  after  having  been  charge  d'affaires  in  China, 
was  sent  as  second  secretary  to  one  of  the  Scandinavian  courts. 
Humpty  Dumpty's  fall  was  not  more  terrible.  As  attache  he  had 
a  curious  little  Flibbertygibbet  of  a  man,  very  clever  but  always 
in  hot  water,  a  never-failing  source  of  amusement  and  study  to 
Wade.  The  interpreter  was  M.  Fontanier,  who  was  murdered 
at  Tientsing  in  the  massacre  of  1870.  I  shall  allude  to  that  story 
later  on 

The  Prussian  Minister  soon  went  on  leave,  and  the  Don  had 
gone  home  to  Spain  hugging  his  precious  treaty.  At  the  American 
Legation  we  had  as  charge  d'affaires  Dr.  Wells  Williams.  He  and 
his  wife  were  a  charming  couple ;  no  longer  young,  but  both  very 
handsome,  like  delightful  old  family  portraits.  They  might  have 
been  members  of  the  pilgrimage  of  the  Mayflower.  Dr.  Wells 
Williams  went  out  to  China  originally  in  some  technical  capacity 
in  connection  with  the  American  missionary  press  at  Canton  ; 
soon  he  drifted  into  sinological  studies  and  wrote  a  dictionary  and 
other  works  ;  but  his  magnum  opus  was  "  The  Middle  Kingdom," 
a  book  of  great  authority  upon  all  Chinese  matters  up  to  the  date 
which  it  reaches — a  perfect  cyclopaedia  of  antiquarian,  historical 
and  political  lore,  a  book  of  reference  without  which  no  man  who 
cares  for  the  Far  East  is  completely  furnished. 

One  evening  when  I  was  dining  with  him  the  talk  turned  upon 
paper  currency.  I  made  a  note  at  the  time  of  what  he  said,  and 
reproduce  it  now  as  interesting  at  a  time  when  we  are  going  back 
to  bank-notes  of  £i  and  IDS.  During  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Shao 
Hsing  of  the  Sung  Dynasty  (A.D.  1170)  copper  was  scarce,  so  the 
Government  issued  two  classes  of  Chao  (notes),  great  notes  (Ta 
VOL.  i  24 


37°  Memories 

Chao)  of  the  value  of  from  one  thousand  to  five  thousand  copper 
cash,  and  small  notes  (Hsiao  Chao)  worth  from  one  hundred  to  seven 
hundred  cash.  Officers  were  appointed  everywhere  to  issue  and 
receive  these  notes.  They  were  renewable  within  seven  years, 
and  fifteen  cash  in  every  thousand  were  deducted  for  the  expense 
of  making  them.  They  were  said  to  be  Rung  ssu  pien — con- 
venient for  both  public  and  private  use — and  Marco  Polo  mentions 
them  with  praise.  Dr.  Wells  Williams  was  always  interesting, 
and  his  wife  had  all  the  charm  of  beauty,  motherly  kindness  and 
soft  gentleness,  illuminated  by  an  intellect  of  no  common  order. 

Besides  General  Vlangaly  there  were  at  the  Russian  Legation 
M.  Glinka,  second  secretary,  a  great  gentleman,  and  Dr.  Pogojeff, 
a  very  clever  doctor  and  a  good  friend  of  mine,  hailing  from  Odessa. 
That,  in  addition  to  the  Russian  Archimandrite,  was  all  the  foreign 
community  of  Peking  in  1865.  Glancing  back  over  this  short 
sketch  of  our  life  in  Peking,  I  am  struck  by  one  very  sad 
thought.  Of  all  the  men  that  I  have  mentioned  so  far  as  I  know 
not  one  is  still  alive.  I  alone  am  left,  the  last  of  the  Mohicans. 

So  the  year  1865  died,  and  1866  reigned  in  its  stead. 

It  does  not  often  happen  to  a  man  to  keep  three  new  years1 
feasts  in  one  year.  This  is  what  befell  me  at  Peking.  On  the 
ist  of  January  at  early  dawn  our  Chinese  servants  came  to  bend 
the  knee  and  wish  us  all  happiness  and  prosperity ;  twelve  days 
later  good  manners  demanded  that  I  should  go  and  salute  General 
Vlangaly  and  the  good  Archimandrite  Palladius  ;  and  finally  on 
Feb.  i4th  crackers  and  squibs  announced  the  approaching  birth 
of  the  Chinese  new  year — characters  of  good  omen  were  pasted 
on  the  doorposts  of  the  houses,  from  which  streamers  of  pierced 
red  paper  fluttered  like  lace. 

On  this  day  it  is  essential  that  there  should  be  much  noise  and 
popping  of  fireworks,  for  there  are  many  demons  to  be  exorcized, 
evil  spirits  of  the  past  year — especially  the  spirit  of  poverty — to 
be  driven  away  ;  on  the  morrow  Peking  must  be  in  gala  trim, 
and  in  the  din  and  clatter  of  drums  and  tambourines  and  cymbals 
and  clappers  and  gongs  and  other  instruments  of  percussion  and 
aural  torture,  there  will  be  much  joy.  Outside  the  huge  main  gate 
there  will  be  a  great  gathering  in  front  of  a  small  temple  roofed 


Peking  371 

with  yellow  imperial  tiles,  the  shrine  of  Kwan  Ti,  the  God  of  War, 
where  the  faithful  with  many  genuflexions  and  reverent  bows 
will  receive  from  the  priest,  for  cash,  a  slip  of  bamboo  drawn  at 
haphazard  to  be  exchanged  for  a  piece  of  paper  upon  which  will 
be  inscribed  the  fate  of  the  votary  for  the  coming  year.  In  the 
street  of  bookshops  there  will  be  a  huge  gathering  with  "  all  the 
fun  of  the  fair,"  toys,  quack  doctors,  jugglers,  beggars,  mounte- 
banks, a  dentist  with  a  great  store  of  extracted  teeth,  mostly 
sound,  above  all — noise  !  and  there  will  be  a  peepshow  in  which 
all  the  famous  places  of  the  world  will  be  represented,  and  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral  and  the  Bay  of  Naples  will  do  duty  as  special 
features  of  the  Liu  Kiu  Islands!  Not  so  very  different  from  the 
Windsor  Fair  of  old  Eton  days  after  all !  "  Homo  est  animal 
bipes,  implume,  et  cachinnans  " — the  same  the  world  over. 

By  way  of  varying  our  amusements  we  managed  with  some 
difficulty  to  flood  a  small  courtyard  for  skating.  The  ice  never 
held  good  for  long,  for  the  dust  made  it  impossible,  and  then  we  had 
to  begin  all  over  again.  Once  we  rode  out  to  the  Summer  Palace 
to  picnic  and  skate  upon  the  great  lake.  That  was  delightful.  We 
were  none  of  us  great  performers,  but  such  as  they  were,  our  twists 
and  turns  excited  the  wonder  of  the  Chinese  soldiers.  What  amazed 
them  above  all  was  going  backwards ;  that  they  could  not  under- 
stand, for  although  skating  was  part  of  the  drill  of  the  braves  of 
the  Tartar  Banners,  it  was  of  a  very  elementary  character  :  just  a 
bone  skate  tied  on  to  one  foot,  the  other  foot  being  used  to  push. 
I  wonder  what  they  would  have  said  if  they  could  have  seen  Mr. 
Grenander,  or  one  of  the  great  artists  in  patinology. 

Happy  as  I  was  at  Peking,  and  delightful  as  are  my  memories  of 
the  grim  old  place,  I  must  admit  that  the  winter  was  long  and  dreary 
enough.  But  at  last  one  day,  as  M.  Vlangaly  and  I  were  wandering 
up  and  down  on  the  city  wall,  we  spied  a  small,  half -starved  weed 
trying  to  poke  its  nose  out  of  a  chink  between  two  stones.  The  dove 
was  not  more  welcome  to  the  Ark.  It  meant  spring.  Soon  the  view 
from  the  wall  would  undergo  a  transformation.  First  all  the 
courtyards  and  gardens  of  the  temples  and  dwellings  of  the  great 
people  would  be  bright  and  gay  with  the  blossoms  of  peaches  and 
apricots  and  all  manner  of  flowering  shrubs,  and  later  on — in  summer 
VOL  i.  24* 


372  Memories 

— the  huge  city  would  be  like  one  vast  park,  with  here  and  there  a 
patch  of  shabby  red  wall  and  a  glimmer  of  yellow  tiles — the  Imperial 
colours — peeping  through  the  wealth  of  greenery. 

The  coming  of  spring  was  all  the  more  looked  forward  to  by  me  as 
I  had  in  prospect  a  trip  to  Mongolia  ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  made  two 
such  journeys,  and  very  delightful  they  were ;  but  of  these  I  have 
written  an  account  elsewhere.* 

I  passed  the  weeks  of  great  heat  hi  a  temple  even  more  delightful 
than  that  of  the  Azure  Clouds — a  monastery  some  twenty-three 
miles  from  Peking,  very  secluded,  hidden  among  the  mountains, 
in  the  midst  of  enchanting  scenery.  Ta  chio  ssu,  the  Temple  of 
Great  Repose,  stands  in  a  perfect  nest  of  trees,  junipers,  pines,  firs 
and  poplars.  Out  of  the  living  rock  behind  the  Pavilion  of  the 
Resting  Clouds  a  delicious  fountain  plays  into  a  fern-clad  pool, 
from  which  it  finds  its  way  through  a  succession  of  courtyards  past 
the  "  Hall  of  the  Four  Proprieties  "  hi  which  there  is  an  Imperial 
throne.  Could  a  man  wish  for  a  happier  spot  in  which  to  work  and 
dream  ? 

Meanwhile  I  was  under  orders  from  the  Foreign  Office  to  leave 
Peking  and  go  to  Japan.  At  the  end  of  September  I  started. 

How  well — let  me  say  it  again — Baroness  von  Heyking  under- 
stood the  magic  of  Peking  and  its  power  of  fascination  amid  so  much 
that  is  sordidly  repellent !  As  I  sadly  rode  out  of  the  gate  at  which 
I  had  entered  so  full  of  enthusiasm  some  eighteen  months  before,  I 
met  a  miserable  beggar,  a  poor  creature  so  filthy  and  degraded  as  to 
be  scarcely  human.  Ragged  and  bare  almost  of  everything  save 
sores  and  clotted  dirt  as  he  was,  I  almost  envied  that  unhappy 
wretch.  He  was  going  in,  I  was  going  out — and  well  I  knew  that 
never  should  I  return. 

*  "The  Attache  at  Peking."     Macmillan,  1900. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 
1866 

JAPAN 

A  LTHOUGH  in  one  shape  or  another  I  have  written  a  good 
.Ix  deal  about  the  Land  of  the  Gods,  I  have  hitherto  refrained 
from  saying  much  about  my  own  personal  experience  in  that  country, 
or  about  the  part  which  was  played  by  Europeans,  and  more 
especially  by  the  English  Legation,  during  the  great  upheaval 
which  resulted  in  the  uniting  as  a  solid  nation  of  that  Japan  which 
for  centuries  had  been  an  agglomeration  of  more  or  less  independent 
principalities.  I  felt  that  there  was  much  that  could  hardly  be 
written  without  indiscretion  until  a  considerable  time  should  have 
elapsed.  Now  practically  half  a  century  has  gone  by  since  the 
curtain  was  rung  down  upon  a  unique  and  most  interesting  drama, 
and  the  Japanese  themselves  speak  of  the  times  of  which  I  am  writing 
as  "  Mukashi  " — "  hi  the  days  of  old."  One  after  another  the  actors, 
Japanese  and  Europeans  alike,  have  disappeared,  and  I  think  that 
the  day  has  come  when  so  much  as  we  know  about  what  took  place 
in  a  revolution  which  has  had  such  far-reaching  consequences  ought 
to  be  recorded,  if  only  as  matiere  pour  servir  d  I'histoire. 

Moreover,  lest  those  who  travel  in  Japan  of  to-day  should  set  me 
down  as  a  second  Baron  von  Miinchhausen,  I  am  anxious  to  say  my 
say  while  there  is  yet  at  least  one  man  alive  who  can  corroborate 
it,  or  scourge  me  if  I  depart  from  the  truth.  That  man  is  Sir  Ernest 
Satow,  my  old  friend  and  colleague,  to  whom  it  was  largely  due  that 
the  sun  shone  so  brightly  on  my  days  in  Japan,  and  that  the  adven- 
turous episodes  through  which  we  lived  together — troublous  as  they 
often  were  at  the  time — have  remained  with  us  only  as  joyous 
and  picturesque  memories  for  a  garrulous  old  age. 

373 


374  Memories 

Those  who  have  the  patience  to  struggle  through  these  stories 
of  a  dead  past  will  understand  what  the  great  Field-Marshal  Prince 
Oyama  meant  when,  in  1906  at  an  exhibition  of  Jujutsu  at  Tokio 
by  a  Japanese  young  lady,  he  turned  round  to  me  and  said  :  "  Some 
of  that  girl's  tricks  would  have  been  pretty  useful  to  you  hi  the  old 
days  that  you  and  I  remember  !  " 

The  voyage  from  Shanghai  to  Yokohama  hi  October,  1866,  was 
a  true  harbinger  of  the  stormy  times  through  which  I  was  to  live 
for  the  next  three  or  four  years.  We  left  Shanghai  hi  the  early 
days  of  October  with  a  falling  barometer,  and  when  we  got  out  to 
sea  we  found  a  typhoon  in  full  blast.  There  was  a  fierce  sea  running, 
but  the  force  of  the  wind  was  so  great  that  it  blew  the  foam  like  a 
carpet  spread  over  the  waves,  so  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  tossing 
of  the  ship,  we  might  have  fancied  ourselves  travelling  over  a  smooth 
surface.  It  was  a  wild  experience,  and  right  thankful  we  were, 
passengers  and  ship's  crew  alike,  when  we  finally  came  to  an  anchor 
outside  Yokohama. 

My  first  landing  in  Japan  was  a  gloomy  disappointment.  Could 
this  be  the  fairy  land  of  whose  beauties  we  had  heard  from  Sherard 
Osborn,  Oliphant,  and  the  earlier  travellers  ?  The  sky  was  grey, 
sad,  and  unfriendly  ;  gusts  of  wind  turned  umbrellas  inside  out  and 
defied  waterproofs.  Where  was  Mount  Fuji  the  peerless,  the 
mountain  of  the  Gods  ?  Veiled,  curtained  and  invisible,  like  the 
charms  of  an  odalisque  at  the  Sweet  Waters  of  Europe.  The  low 
eaves  of  what  seemed  to  be  a  custom  house  were  mere  runlets  of 
water.  Drip,  drip,  drip  !  In  front  of  the  building  a  number  of 
yakunin,  small  government  employes,  bristling  with  sword  and 
dirk,  clad  in  sad-coloured  robes  with  quaint  lacquer  hats,  a  mob  of 
coolies  with  rain-coats  made  of  straw,  looking  like  animated  haycocks 
sodden  in  an  unpropitious  season  ;  a  woman  or  two  clattering  and 
splashing  in  high  wooden  pattens,  carrying  babies  sorely  afflicted 
with  skin  diseases  slung  behind  their  backs — a  melancholy  arrival, 
in  all  truth,  and  sufficiently  depressing.  All  but  half  a  century  ago  ! 

But  of  such  a  crowd  as  this^— bowmen,  spearmen  and  swordsmen, 
for  they  were  little  more — was  made  up  the  brotherhood  which  in 
some  four  hundred  and  eighty  months  was  to  win  its  place  in  the 
sun,  tearing  to  tatters  China's  boasted  supremacy  in  the  Far  East, 


Japan  375 

sweeping  a  great  European  navy  off  the  face  of  the  seas,  taking, 
not  once  but  twice,  by  sheer  dogged  valour  and  patriotism,  scorn 
of  life  and  scorn  of  death,  the  famous  citadel  which  men  said  could 
set  at  nought  the  science  and  heroism  of  the  civilized  world. 

For  the  first  two  or  three  days,  until  a  lair  of  my  own  could  be 
made  ready  for  me,  Sir  Harry  Parkes  took  me  in  and  lodged  me  at 
the  Legation,  a  rather  rickety  but  comfortable  bungalow  on  the 
bund.  The  first  night  at  dinner,  perhaps  owing  to  the  dismal 
weather,  the  conversation  turned  upon  lugubrious  subjects — the 
anti-foreign  feeling  in  the  country  ;  the  murders  of  Richardson, 
and  more  recently  of  Baldwin  and  Bird  ;  the  bloodthirsty  attacks 
upon  the  Legation  by  Ronins  in  the  time  of  Sir  Rutherford  Alcock 
and  Colonel  Neale.  After  all  this  raw-head  and  bloody-bones  sort 
of  talk  we  went  off  a  little  dolefully  to  bed.  In  the  dead  of  the 
night  I  was  awakened  by  the  clatter  of  wooden  sliding  doors,  the 
rattling  of  glass,  and  the  shaking  of  the  whole  bungalow — it  was  the 
din  of  the  infernal  regions.  I  jumped  up  and  seizing  my  revolver, 
rushed  out  into  the  passage,  quite  expecting  to  see  it  full  of  Ronins 
with  blades  reeking  gore.  Full  indeed  the  passages  were — but  not 
of  Ronins ;  for  every  soul  was  on  the  alert,  revolver  hi  hand,  ready 
for  deeds  of  derring-do.  But  it  was  no  mortal  foe  that  was  attacking 
us.  It  was  an  earthquake.  The  devils  that  stoke  the  fires  of  the 
infernal  regions  were  at  work,  and  we  could  hardly  fight  them 
with  revolvers  !  For  a  few  minutes  it  seemed  as  if  the  building 
must  collapse  like  a  house  of  cards  ;  but  it  managed  to  hold  together, 
and  all  was  quiet ;  so  we  went  to  bed  again,  and  when  we  awoke 
next  morning  the  sun  was  shining,  the  mist  had  all  faded  away,  the 
air  was  crisp  and  sharp,  and  the  day  was  full  of  glory. 

Walking  out  that  afternoon  and  suddenly  coming  in  full  view  of 
Mount  Fuji,  snow-capped,  rearing  its  matchless  cone  heavenward 
in  one  gracefully  curving  slope  from  the  sea  level,  I  too  was  caught 
by  the  fever  of  intoxication  which  the  day  before  had  seemed  quite 
inexplicable — a  fever  which  burns  to  this  day,  and  will  continue  to 
burn  hi  my  veins  to  the  end  of  my  life. 

It  so  happened  that  during  the  next  few  days  there  was  little 
work  to  do,  and  so,  under  the  kindly  guidance  of  my  old  friend 
Satow,  I  was  able  to  wander  about  the  neighbourhood  of  Yokohama, 


Memories 


making  short  excursions  in  the  country,  now  in  all  the  bravery  of 
its  autumn  beauty  ;  and  what  can  be  more  lovely  than  those  valleys 
with  the  rich  cultivation  below,  and  the  hillsides  covered  with 
"  the  scarlet  and  golden  tissue  of  the  maples  "  fringed  by  graceful 
bamboos,  standing  out  against  the  dark  green  pines  and  sombre 
cryptomerias  ?  Very  picturesque  and  attractive  are  the  Shinto 
shrines,  and  the  eaves  of  the  little  Buddhist  temples  peeping  from 
among  the  rocks,  half  hidden  by  the  varied  foliage  which  embowers 
the  choicest  spots.  It  is  a  farmers'  country,  and  Inari  Sama,  their 
patron  god,  with  his  attendant  foxes,  has  his  full  meed  of  worship. 

When  I  arrived  in  Japan  the  country  was  politically  in  a  state  of 
fever  ;  it  was  on  the  eve  of  an  earthquake  which  has  upset  the  whole 
balance  of  the  world  and  of  which  the  full  effects  have  perhaps  not 
yet  been  felt.  In  that  upheaval  the  European  influence  was  a  factor 
of  which  hitherto  little  notice  has  been  taken,  for  obvious  reasons  ; 
but  it  nevertheless  played  a  very  real  and  important  part.  In  1866 
that  influence  resolved  itself  into  the  struggle  for  dominance  between 
two  men  —  Sir  Harry  Parkes  and  M.  Leon  Roches,  the  French 
Minister. 

Sir  Harry  Parkes  was  certainly  a  very  remarkable  person.  He 
was  a  small,  wiry,  fair-haired  man  with  a  great  head  and  broad 
brow,  almost  out  of  proportion  to  his  body  ;  his  energy  was  stupen- 
dous, he  was  absolutely  fearless  and  tireless,  very  excitable  and  quick 
to  anger.  Having  been  sent  out  to  China  as  a  boy  of  thirteen  in 
1841,  he  learnt  the  language  with  almost  superhuman  industry, 
and  was  doing  important  work  as  interpreter,  often  in  most 
dangerous  expeditions,  at  an  age  when  other  boys  are  yet  wondering 
whether  they  will  ever  get  into  the  school  eleven.  His  career  in 
China  is  too  well  known  for  me  to  refer  to  it  here.  When  he  was 
only  thirty-eight  years  old  he  was  appointed  Minister  to  Japan, 
and  there  later  in  the  year  I  joined  him. 

He  often  expressed  to  me  his  regret  that  his  education  had  been 
so  early  broken  off.  The  loss  weighed  heavily  upon  him.  Yet  no 
man  would  have  suspected  him  of  want  of  literary  culture.  He  must 
have  created  time,  for  busy  as  his  life  was,  he  had  read  greedily, 
and  he  often  took  me  by  surprise  in  unexpected  ways  ;  his  great 
shortcoming  as  a  diplomatist  was  want  of  knowledge  of  French. 


Japan  377 

.  Leon  Roches,  the  French  Minister,  was  a  handsome  swash- 
buckler, who  had  been  an  interpreter  hi  the  French  army  in  Algeria. 
He  was  far  more  a  picturesque  Spahi  than  a  diplomatist. 

The  ministers  of  the  other  Treaty  Powers  were  mere  cyphers. 
Herr  von  Brandt,  the  Prussian  Minister,  a  man  of  great  ability, 
was  away  at  home,  taking  advantage  of  his  leave  to  render  signal 
service  to  his  country  during  the  war  of  1866,  for  which  he  received 
the  thanks  of  the  great  Bismarck.  When  he  returned  to  Japan 
later  in  the  revolution  he  too  played  a  conspicuous  part. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Parkes  and  Roches  hated  one  another 
and  were  as  jealous  as  a  couple  of  women.  In  the  struggle  between 
the  Daimios  and  the  Shogun  the  beau  sabreur  backed  the  wrong 
horse.  Parkes  had  at  his  elbow  a  man  of  extraordinary  ability  hi 
the  person  of  Mr.  Satow.  He  it  was  who  swept  away  all  the  cobwebs 
of  the  old  Dutch  diplomacy,  and  by  an  accurate  study  of  Japanese 
history  and  of  Japanese  customs  and  traditions,  realized  and  gave 
true  value  to  the  position  of  the  Shogun,  showing  that  the  Mikado 
alone  was  the  sovereign  of  Japan.  Nor  was  this  all.  His  really 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  language,  combined  with  great  tact  and 
transparent  honesty,  had  enabled  him  to  establish  friendly  relations 
with  most  of  the  leading  men  in  the  country ;  thus,  young  as  he 
was,  achieving  a  position  which  was  of  incalculable  advantage  to 
his  chief. 

There  was  another  man,  Mr.  Thomas  Glover,  a  merchant  at 
Nagasaki,  who  also  rendered  good,  though  hitherto  unacknowledged, 
service  hi  the  same  sense.  Parkes  had  the  wit  to  see  the  wisdom  of 
Satow' s  policy  and  the  value  of  his  advice,  and,  having  recognized 
it,  he  had  the  courage  and  determination  to  carry  it  into  effect, 
giving  the  whole  of  his  moral  support  to  the  Daimios,  while  Roches 
persisted  in  the  vain  endeavour  to  bolster  up  the  Shogun,  whose 
power  had  dwindled  away  to  vanishing-point. 

One  day  Parkes  came  into  my  room  like  a  whirlwind,  his  fair, 
reddish  hair  almost  standing  on  end,  as  was  its  way  when  he  was 
excited.  "  What  is  the  matter,  Sir  Harry  ?  "  I  asked.  "  Matter  !  " 
was  the  answer.  "  What  do  you  think  that  fellow  Roches  has  just 
told  me  ?  He  is  going  to  have  a  mission  militaire  out  from  France 
to  drill  the  Shogun 's  army  !  Never  mind  !  I'll  be  even  with  him. 


378  Memories 

I'll  have  a  mission  navale  !  " — and  he  did.  Three  months  later 
out  came  the  mission  militaire,  with  Captain  Chanoine  at  its  head — 
Chanoine  who  afterwards  became  famous  when,  as  general,  he  was 
for  three  days  War  Minister,  and  resigned  owing  to  the  Dreyfus 
affair.  My  old  friend,  General  Descharmes,  then  a  captain,  was  the 
cavalry  officer,  and  arrived  with  a  grand  piano  and  a  whole  reper- 
toire of  Beethoven,  Mozart,  Chopin,  etc.  He  was  a  really  great 
musician,  which  did  not  hinder  him  from  being  a  first-rate  soldier.* 
Brunet  was  the  artilleryman  ;  he  afterwards  got  into  a  scrape  by 
taking  command  hi  the  Shogun's  army,  when  it  made  its  last  stand 
at  Wakamatsu  in  the  northern  province  of  Aidzu.  Du  Bousquet 
represented  the  infantry,  and  became  a  competent  Japanese  scholar  ; 
Caseneuve  was  the  fifth  officer. 

Not  very  long  afterwards  Captain  Tracy  and  the  mission  navale 
appeared  upon  the  scene  as  Parkes'  counterblast. 

Who  could  have  foretold  that  the  foundation  of  the  marvellously 
successful  Japanese  army  and  navy  should  have  had  its  origin 
in  the  jealousy  of  the  English  and  French  Ministers  ?  It  was 
indeed  a  pregnant  episode,  of  which,  so  far  as  I  know,  no  notice 
has  been  taken.  No  doubt  the  effect  of  the  two  missions  only 
hurried  on  and  brought  to  a  head  what  must  ultimately  have 
taken  place,  although  the  change  would  have  been  slower,  retarded 
perhaps  for  many  years  ;  for  anyone  who  is  acquainted  with  the 
Japanese  character  must  see  that  once  the  seclusion  of  centuries 
was  broken  into,  and  the  country  entered  into  the  comity  of 
nations,  the  ambitious  aspirations  of  a  people  so  deeply  moved 
by  national  sentiment  would  never  have  been  satisfied  with  an 
inferior  position. 

Monsieur  Roches  had  a  whole  network  of  schemes  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  French  monopolies — docks,  harbours,  arsenals  and 
what  not.  But  all  these  depended  upon  the  permanence  of  the 
Shogun's  power.  And  even  if  that  had  been  effected  by  his 

*  Years  afterwards,  when  Descharmes  was  military  attache  in  London,  he 
came  to  dine  with  us.  Joachim  was  of  the  party  and  had  brought  his  violin 
quite  unexpectedly.  He  asked  for  an  accompanist.  I  had  asked  no  one  for 
the  purpose,  little  thinking  that  it  would  be  required.  Descharmes  sat  down 
and  played  the  accompaniments  at  sight,  to  Joachim's  amazement  and 
great  satisfaction.  Both  violinist  and  pianist  are  now  alas  t  dead. 


Japan  379 

support,  there  would  have  been  diplomatic  wigs  upon  the  green 
before  he  would  have  been  able  even  to  initiate  his  ambitious 
designs.  Our  chief  was  far  too  wide  awake  for  him. 

Political  changes  or  upheavals  are  probably  seldom  or  never 
due  to  one  cause  only.  They  are  rather  brought  about  by  com- 
binations in  which  several,  or  perhaps  many,  factors  play  a  part. 
In  any  case,  in  Japan  the  psychological  moment  had  arrived. 
The  usurped  rule  of  the  Tokugawa  Shoguns  had  wrought  no  little 
good  in  the  country  ;  two  hundred  years  of  peace — after  centuries 
of  internecine  civil  wars — were  something  to  their  credit,  some- 
thing for  which  men  might  well  be  thankful.  The  natural  evanes- 
cence of  gratitude,  however,  was  hurried  on  by  the  despotic  laws 
laid  down  by  lyemitsu,  the  third  Shogun  of  the  dynasty — the 
grandson  of  its  founder,  lyeyasu.  lyemitsu  had  been  dead  for  a 
hundred  and  sixty  years  and  more,  and  his  successors,  far  from 
inheriting  his  masterful  spirit,  had  lapsed  into  sloth  and  political 
impotence.  It  took  some  time  even  in  those  circumstances  for 
the  end  to  come — but  it  came. 

It  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  proud  nobles  like  Satsuma, 
Choshiu,  Tosa,  and  the  fabulously  wealthy  Kaga  should  remain 
for  ever  in  almost  servile  subjection  to  an  effete  despotism  under 
conditions  which  it  is  difficult  now  to  realize.  Why  should  they 
do  homage  to  a  ruler — at  most  the  self-appointed  vicar  of  their 
real  sovereign  ?  Why  should  they  submit  to  enforced  residence 
in  his  capital,  leaving  behind  them,  if  they  went  home  to  their 
own  provinces,  wives  and  children  as  hostages  for  their  return  ? 
Why  should  they  be  deprived  of  all  voice  in  the  affairs  of  their 
country  ?  The  thing  was  unthinkable. 

One  main  cause  of  the  fall  of  the  Tokugawa  power  came  from 
within.  When  lyeyasu  established  his  dynasty  he  made  provi- 
sion for  its  continuance  in  case  the  direct  line  of 'his  son  Hidetada 
should  fail.  He  directed  that  in  that  case  the  Shogun  should 
be  chosen  from  the  descendants  of  his  sons,  the  Lords  of  Ki,  Owari, 
and  Mito.  The  second  of  the  Lords  of  Mito,  Tokugawa  Mitsukuni, 
who  has  been  called  the  Maecenas  of  Japan  on  account  of  his 
own  scholarship  and  his  encouragement  of  learning  in  others,* 
*  See  Professor  Longford's  admirable  "  Story  of  Old  Japan,"  p.  312. 


380  Memories 

employed  a  number  of  the  best  scholars  of  the  Empire  to  produce 
the  Dai  Nihon  Shi,  the  history  of  Japan  from  the  days  of  the 
fabulous  Jimmu  Tenno  down  to  the  abdication  in  A.D.  1413  of 
the  Emperor  Go  Komatsu.  (Mr.  Longford  reckons  him  as  the 
9Qth  Mikado  ;  but  the  0  Dai  Ichi  Ran  makes  him  to  have  been  the 

lOISt.) 

The  book  was  not  printed  until  1857,  but  it  was  largely  circu- 
lated in  MSS.  and  so  it  came  about  that  the  grandson  of  lyeyasu 
was  largely  responsible  for  the  scattering  broadcast  of  a  book 
which,  as  it  was  written  to  prove  the  sole  supremacy  of  the  Mikado, 
was  one  of  the  earliest  blows  struck  at  the  Shogun's  power.  Nay 
more.  By  one  of  those  coincidences  in  which  the  irony  of  fate 
reveals  itself,  it  was  upon  his  own  descendant,  Tokugawa  Keiki, 
the  third  son  of  a  later  Lord  of  Mito,  that  the  final  blow  fell.  In 
1827  appeared  the  Nihon  Gwai  Shi,*  "  the  foreign  history  of 
Japan,"  which  is  a  history  of  the  Shogunate  from  its  first  founda- 
tion by  Yoritomo  in  the  I2th  century.  These  books  had  created 
a  ferment  in  the  country — at  least  among  the  lettered  classes 
— which  nothing  could  allay,  and  the  great  nobles  were  ready  and 
eager  for  a  revolt. 

Kingdoms  and  governments  and  systems  wear  out  like  old 
clothes,  and  the  once  glorious,  trefoil-crested  Jim-Baori  (war  sur- 
coat)  of  the  Tokugawa  Shogun  was  beginning  to  show  many  signs 
of  wear  and  tear,  when  the  arrival  of  Commodore  Perry  with  four 
little  American  ships  caused  the  beginning  of  the  last  fatal  rent 
in  its  silken  tissue.  The  Bakufu,  the  Government  of  the  Shogun, 
were  paralysed  with  fear ;  they  were  at  their  wits'  end,  and  when 
the  United  States  commander  proposed  a  treaty — a  very  modest 
agreement,  asking  nothing  more  than  access  to  three  harbours  of 
refuge — they  referred  to  Kioto  for  instructions — they  who  were 
supposed  to  rule  Kioto — and  they  appealed  for  advice  to  the 
Daimios  whom  they  claimed  as  feudal  subjects.  In  the  mean- 
time, as  a  protective  measure  against  the  foreigner  they  called  out 
the  fire  brigade  of  Yedo — some  fifty  miles  away  from  where  the 
western  ships  were  lying  !  The  ringing  of  those  fire-bells  tolled 
the  knell  of  the  Shogun's  power.  Commodore  Perry  quickly 
*  See  Mr.  Longford  ut  supra. 


Japan  381 

sailed  away,  saying  that  he  would  come  back  in  a  year  for  an 
answer ;  when  he  returned  his  modest  little  treaty  was  at  his 
command.  In  1858  Lord  Elgin  and  Baron  Gros  concluded  the 
first  substantial  treaties  opening  the  country  to  foreign  trade. 

These  few  lines  seem  indispensable  for  an  understanding  of 
what  was  to  take  place  in  1867  and  1868.  Those  who  wish  for 
details  must  be  referred  to  the  histories  of  Sir  F.  O.  Adams  and 
Professor  Longford. 

To  return  to  my  own  story.  A  week  had  hardly  passed  away 
from  my  first  landing  in  Yokohama  when  I  was  installed  in  what 
seemed  to  me  the  daintiest  little  cottage  in  the  world.  It  was 
built  of  fair  white  wood  and  paper,  not  much  bigger  than  a  doll's 
house,  and  quite  as  flimsy ;  it  had  a  tiny  verandah,  decked  out 
with  half  a  dozen  dwarf  trees,  looking  on  to  a  miniature  garden 
about  the  size  of  an  Arab's  prayer  carpet,  and  was  one  of  a  group 
of  three  such  dwellings,  the  other  two  being  occupied  by  Mr.  Satow 
and  Dr.  Willis — so  we  formed  a  small  Legation  colony  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  native  town.  It  was  all  on  so  miniature  a  scale  that 
it  seemed  as  if  one  must  have  shrunken  and  shrivelled  up  in  order 
to  fit  oneself  to  it.  As  for  Willis  who,  dear  man,  was  a  giant,  how 
he  got  into  his  house  and  how,  once  in,  he  ever  got  out  again 
remained  as  big  a  mystery  as  that  of  the  apple  in  the  dumpling. 

Of  course  we  had  a  house-warming — also  on  a  miniature  scale 
— with  an  officer  or  two  of  the  gth  Regiment  as  guests,  and  three 
or  four  winsome  geishas  to  sing  and  dance  for  us.  So  with  Wein, 
Weib  und  Gesang,  and  a  supper  of  rice  and  mysterious  dishes  of 
fish  and  bean  curd,  sent  in  by  a  Japanese  cook-shop,  we  spent 
a  very  merry  evening.  It  was  midnight  when  the  little  maids, 
with  great  reverence  and  many  knockings  of  their  pretty  heads 
upon  the  mats,  took  their  leave,  and  my  first  Japanese  party 
came  to  an  end.  The  whole  cost,  including  music  and  dancing, 
came  to  a  little  over  a  dollar  a  head.  I  don't  suppose  that  in 
these  improved  days  you  could  do  it  for  four  or  five  times  the  money. 

Our  little  colony  was  fated  to  have  but  a  short  span  of  life. 
On  the  26th  of  November  I  was  aroused  by  a  violent  gale  which 
blew  in  one  of  the  shutters  of  my  home.  I  got  up,  but  unfor- 
tunately did  not  dress  at  once,  as  I  wanted  to  arrange  my  furniture, 


382  Memories 

part  of  which  had  only  been  sent  in  the  evening  before.  As  I  was 
shaving  my  Chinese  servant  came  and  told  me  that  there  was 
a  fire  two-thirds  of  a  mile  off.  "  All  right,"  I  said.  "  When  I  am 
dressed  I  will  go  and  see  it."  Little  did  I  know  of  the  rapidity 
of  flames  in  a  native  town.  By  the  time  I  had  shaved  I  saw  that 
there  would  be  just  time  to  huddle  on  a  pair  of  trousers  and  a 
pea-jacket.  The  fire,  driven  by  the  raging  wind,  seemed  to  be 
all  round  me.  I  rushed  from  the  house  followed  by  my  dog,  who, 
poor  beast !  bewildered  by  the  noise  and  the  crowd,  bolted  back 
again  into  the  furnace,  where  I  found  his  charred  bones  the  next 
day  under  the  ashes  of  a  clothes  cupboard,  to  which  he  had  evi- 
dently fled  for  shelter.  In  an  hour  or  a  little  more  nothing  was 
left  of  the  Japanese  quarter  in  which  we  lived.  The  wind  howled 
and  whistled.  The  flames  leapt  from  roof  to  roof,  the  burning 
wooden  shingles,  driven,  as  it  seemed,  for  a  couple  of  hundred  yards 
finding  fresh  food  for  their  insatiable  greed.  There  was  no  crash- 
ing noise  of  falling  timbers  such  as  one  hears  in  a  London  fire. 
The  flames  passed  over  the  houses  and  simply  devoured  them 
like  gun-cotton  passed  through  a  burning  candle — a  wonderful  and 
appalling  sight.  In  a  few  minutes  of  what  had  been  teeming  human 
homes  nothing  remained  but  a  heap  of  ashes  and  a  few  red-hot  tiles. 

Nothing  could  cope  with  the  fierceness  of  the  attack.  The 
European  quarter  was  soon  under  the  curse.  Stone  houses — 
warehouses  supposed  to  be  fireproof — were  of  no  avail.  Had  not 
the  wind  abated  towards  the  afternoon  nothing  would  have 
remained.  As  it  was,  about  one  third  of  the  foreign  buildings 
was  destroyed.  It  was  the  swiftness  of  the  blow  that  was  so 
terrifying ;  it  showed  how  in  a  great  town  like  Yedo  whole 
quarters,  a  mile  or  two  square  of  houses  that  are  just  tinder,  may 
be  eaten  up  by  fire  in  a  few  hours. 

There  was  much  loss  of  life.  The  next  day  close  to  where  my 
house  had  stood  I  saw  a  piteous  row  of  corpses  charred  so  that 
their  humanity  was  hardly  to  be  recognized,  and  was  told  that 
this  was  but  one  of  many  such  rows.  The  victims  were  chiefly 
women  from  the  Gankiro  where  the  fire  broke  out.  One  partially 
burned  body  was  found  in  a  well  into  which  in  her  agony  a  poor 
girl  had  leaped. 


Japan  383 

My  possessions  consisted  of  the  pea-jacket,  singlet,  trousers, 
shoes  and  socks  in  which  I  stood ;  but  those  who  had  been  spared 
were  very  kind  to  us.  The  good  English  Admiral,  Sir  George 
King,  sent  me  six  shirts  with  a  letter  which  I  treasure. 

In  the  meantime  Sir  Harry  Parkes  had  made  up  his  mind  that 
he  would  once  more  insist  upon  taking  up  his  residence  in  Yedo, 
which  had  been  abandoned  on  account  of  the  attacks  upon  the 
Legation  in  Alcock's  time  and  when  Neale  was  charge  d'affaires 
— attacks  culminating  in  the  destruction  by  Ronin  of  the  buildings 
which  were  in  course  of  erection  at  Goten  Yama,  a  hill  above  the 
ill-famed  borough  of  Shinagawa,  a  very  pretty  spot,  which  the 
Shdgun  had  assigned  as  a  site  for  the  foreign  Legations.  It  was 
a  matter  of  common  talk  that  Prince  Ito  in  his  salad  days  was 
one  of  that  body  of  Ronin ;  we  often  used  to  chaff  him  about  it  in 
old  times  before  he  became  such  a  great  man,  but  when  he  was 
already  a  good  friend  of  ours,  and  he  never  denied  it — but  only 
laughed. 

One  morning  Parkes  sent  for  me  to  talk  the  matter  over.  He 
argued,  and  I  quite  agreed  with  him,  that  it  was  a  most  undignified 
and  anomalous  position  for  an  English  Minister  accredited  to  a 
so-called  friendly  country  practically  to  waive  the  right  of  residence 
in  what,  if  not  the  true  capital  of  that  country,  was,  at  any  rate, 
at  the  moment  the  seat  of  Government.  And  so  to  Yedo  we 
went,  remaining  only  a  few  days  at  first  in  order  to  make  ready 
for  our  permament  abode  there.  This  was  in  the  early  part  of 
November,  a  few  days  before  the  great  fire  at  Yokohama. 

The  buildings  which  we  were  to  occupy  were  two  long,  low, 
ramshackle  bungalows,  the  one  for  the  Minister,  the  other  for  the 
rest  of  us,  in  a  court  below  the  famous  temple  of  Sengakuji — 
where  the  forty-seven  Ronin*  are  buried.  At  the  gate  was  an 
out-building  occupied  by  a  guard  of  the  Qth  Regiment,  now  the 
Norfolks,  from  Yokohama.  It  must  seem  almost  incredible  to 
the  Japanese  of  the  present  day  to  think  of  Yokohama  being 
guarded  by  a  British  infantry  regiment,  quartered  in  barracks 
on  the  bluff  above  the  town  !  And  this  a  little  less  than  fifty 
years  ago  ! 

*  See  my  "  Tales  of  Old  Japan  " 


384  Memories 

In  addition  to  the  English  soldiers  we  had  a  large  guard  01 
Bettegumi,  a  corps  of  Samurai  of  a  rather  humble  class  specially 
raised  for  the  protection  of  foreign  officials,  but  who  were  far  more 
concerned  with  spying  upon  us  than  fighting  for  us.  Never  was 
espionage  carried  out  in  such  perfection  as  it  was  in  Japan,  where 
in  the  days  of  the  Bakufu  it  attained  the  dignity  of  a  fine  art. 
No  native  official,  whatever  his  rank  might  be,  went  forth  on  his 
business  alone.  An  ometsuke,  the  "  eye  in  attendance,"  stuck 
to  him  like  his  shadow.  No  man  was  trusted,  and  it  is  not  to 
be  wondered  at  that  we  also  should  have  been  unable  to  move  a 
step  without  our  "  eyes  in  attendance." 

The  bungalow  barracks  under  Sengakuji  furnished  a  miserable 
lodging — neither  doors,  windows  nor  shutters  fitted  ;  there  were 
a  few  stoves,  which  either  got  red-hot  and  smelt  of  burning  iron, 
or  gave  no  heat  at  all.  The  wind  whistled  unhindered  through 
long  passages  and  chilly  rooms,  so  that  it  almost  seemed  as  if  we 
should  be  better  off  in  the  open,  where,  at  any  rate,  there  would 
be  no  draughts. 

On  that  first  evening  there  was  no  temptation  to  sit  up  late  ; 
shivering  and  shaking,  we  went  to  bed  very  early,  but  it  was  long 
before  even  a  pile  of  blankets  could  bring  enough  warmth  to  enable 
me  to  sleep.  While  it  was  yet  quite  dark,  and  as  it  seemed  to 
me  the  middle  of  the  night,  I  was  awakened  by  a  bugle-call.  I 
jumped  up  and  ran,  pistol  in  hand,  formidable,  breathing  bloody 
vengeance,  as  I  did  at  Yokohama  when  the  earth  quaked,  to  the 
verandah  to  see  what  was  the  terrible  danger — hailed  the  sentry 
outside.  "  What  is  the  matter  ?  "  "  Please,  sir,  it's  only  the 
rewelly."  Relieved,  I  crept  back  into  the  warmth  of  my  nest. 

What  with  the  discomfort  of  the  buildings,  the  sensation  of 
being  closely  guarded,  and  the  inquisitive  watchfulness  of  the 
Bettegumi,  we  felt  as  if  we  were  in  prison,  and  so  Satow  and  myself 
begged  Sir  Harry  to  allow  us  to  hire  a  little  temple  outside.  Our 
chief  jumped  at  the  idea,  for  he  was  naturally  anxious  to  do  every 
thing  that  would  tend  to  break  the  spell  of  lack  of  freedom  which 
he  rightly  felt  to  be  most  detrimental  to  any  real  intercourse  with 
Japan.  So  Mr.  Satow  and  I  rented  Monriuin,  a  delicious  little 
shrine  a  few  hundred  yards  from  the  Legation,  on  a  tiny  hill 


Japan  385 

commanding  a  lovely  view  over  the  bay  of  Yedo ;  we  were  the 
first  foreigners  to  live  out  of  bounds  in  that  great  city.  From 
the  Bettegumi  there  was  no  escape — not  even  for  an  afternoon's 
walk,  or  to  go  across  to  the  Legation.  Otherwise  we  were  free,  we 
could  hold  intercourse  with  natives,  and  if  we  heard  the  "  rewelly  " 
it  was  softened  by  distance.  Forty  years  afterwards  I  went  back 
to  Japan,  and  of  course  wished  to  visit  the  old  place.  Alas  !  Evil 
times  had  fallen  upon  the  monks  :  the  dainty  little  dwelling  was 
all  rack  and  ruin,  the  trim  garden  a  wilderness  of  unwholesome 
weeds.  It  was  a  piteous  sight. 

We  mounted  out  little  menage  very  frugally.  In  order  to  save 
the  expense  of  a  cook,  a  batterie  de  cuisine,  knives  and  forks,  etc., 
we  got  our  dinner  sent  in  from  a  Japanese  cookshop  ;  with  rice  and 
fish  we  did  well  enough — adding  now  and  then  a  little  dish  of  chicken 
or  duck.  But  there  came  a  day  when  the  weather,  having  been 
too  bad  for  the  fishermen  to  go  out,  our  restaurateur  with  many 
apologies  sent  us  a  dinner  of  bamboo  shoots  and  sea-weed.  That 
was  a  jour  maigre  with  a  vengeance. 

From  that  time  forth  it  will  be  seen  that  Satow  and  I  hunted 
very  much  in  couples.  I  was  nominally  the  senior  and  had  to 
draw  up  the  reports  of  our  proceedings,  but  I  may  say  once  for  all 
that  his  was  the  brain  which  was  responsible  for  the  work  which 
I  recorded.  It  is  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  services  which  he 
rendered  in  very  critical  times,  and  it  is  right  that  this  should  not 
be  forgotten. 

It  was  well  that  we  had  made  arrangements  for  settling  the 
Legation  at  Yedo,  for  in  the  last  days  of  December  the  Legation 
house  at  Yokohama  was  burnt  down.  As  the  Japanese  in  their 
letter  of  condolence  to  Sir  Harry  expressed  it,  "  the  calamity  of 
the  dancing  horse  "  had  once  more  made  itself  felt.* 

*  This  is  borrowed  from  the  Chinese  classics  ;  it  seems  that  in  the  days  of 
the  Sung  dynasty  in  China  a  tower  called  "  the  Tower  of  the  Dancing  Horse  " 
was  burnt  down,  since  which  time  a  great  fi  e  is  called  after  it. 


VOL.    I  25 


CHAPTER  XIX  L 

THE    SHOGUN  OR  TYCOON 

IN  the  beginning  of  1867  there  was  a  great  stir  in  Japanese 
politics,  and  it  was  evident  to  those  who,  like  ourselves,  were 
more  or  less  behind  the  scenes  that  we  were  on  the  eve  of  what 
might  prove  to  be  a  critical  state  of  affairs  whichever  party  gained 
the  upper  hand.  Meanwhile  the  Shogun  lyemochi  had  died  on  the 
igth  of  September,  1866,  and  Tokugawa  Keiki,  who,  as  I  have 
already  said,  was  the  third  son  of  the  Lord  of  Mito  and  whose  rise 
was  due  to  the  intrigues  of  his  father,  succeeded  to  the  office  ;  he 
soon  announced  his  intention  of  receiving  the  foreign  ministers 
at  Osaka,  an  ugly  city  of  rivers  and  canals,  a  great  and  important 
trade  centre,  but  with  no  claim  other  than  its  waterways  to  be 
called,  as  it  sometimes  was,  the  Venice  of  the  Far  East.  In  the 
first  week  of  February  Mr.  Satow  and  myself  were  sent  hi  a  man 
of-war  to  make  the  necessary  arrangements  and  settle  all  the 
questions  of  etiquette  and  procedure  which  might  crop  up.  We 
had  with  us  as  guests  Captain  Cardew  of  the  gth  Regiment  and 
Lieutenant  Thalbitzer  of  the  Danish  Navy. 

We  landed  at  Hiogo  and  rode  to  Osaka.  Besides  a  mounted 
escort  of  officers  soldiers  were  posted  at  intervals  all  along  the 
road,  and  as  we  passed  each  post  the  men  fell  in  and  followed 
behind  us,  so  that  by  the  time  we  reached  our  destination  we  had 
a  tail  of  between  two  and  three  thousand  men.  This  was  pretty 
good  evidence  of  the  anxiety  of  the  Government  for  our  safety. 

On  landing  we  heard  that  the  Mikado  Komei  had  died  of  small- 
pox on  the  3rd  of  February — as  a  matter  of  fact  he  had  died  on 
the  3oth  of  January,  but  for  some  mysterious  reason  the  date  was 

386 


The  Shogun  or  Tycoon  387 

given  as  four  days  later.  His  successor,  the  famous  Emperor 
Mutsu  Hito,  was  then  a  boy  of  fifteen.  Those  who  knew  him  had 
great  faith  hi  his  ability  and  predicted  great  things  for  him  if  he 
should  be  properly  trained.  Their  forecast  was  well  justified. 
Had  the  Emperor  Komei,  who  was  a  deadly  foe  to  all  foreign 
intercourse,  lived  the  events  of  the  next  few  months  must  have 
been  very  different. 

When  we  reached  Osaka  we  found  that  a  pretty  little  shrine 
in  a  street  more  or  less  devoted  to  temples  had  been  prepared  for 
our  reception.  We  were  feasted  and  treated  right  royally,  and 
everything  was  done  to  make  our  duties  easy  and  our  stay  agree- 
able. It  will  astonish  the  tourist  of  to-day  to  hear  that  we  were 
looked  upon  as  such  curiosities  that  the  street  in  which  we  lived 
was  so  crowded  with  sightseers  as  to  be  almost  impassable  and  the 
hucksters  and  costers  of  Osaka  set  up  a  fair  outside  our  temple, 
where  they  did  a  roaring  trade  hi  fruit,  sweetmeats,  cheap  toys 
and  the  like. 

Although  our  mission  to  Osaka  was  nominally  intended  to 
arrange  the  ceremonial  to  be  observed  at  the  approaching  recep- 
tion by  the  Tycoon  of  the  Foreign  Representatives,  and  especially 
of  Sir  Harry  Parkes,  it  gave  an  excellent  opportunity  for  obtaining 
information  as  to  the  political  situation  in  Kioto.  It  was  during 
this  visit  that  I  first  made  acquaintance  with  some  of  the  leading 
men  of  the  clans — men  who  were  destined  to  play  a  great  part 
in  the  days  that  were  to  follow.  We  were  visited  by  representa- 
tives of  both  the  rival  parties,  that  of  the  discontented  Daimios 
and  that  of  the  Tycoon.  Foremost  among  the  latter  were  some 
of  the  northerners  of  Aidzu,  men  who  were  ready  to  lay  down  their 
lives,  and  did  actually  die,  for  the  honour  of  the  Tokugawa  ;  others 
from  the  Satsuma,  Choshiu,  Tosa  and  Uwajima  clans  were  moving 
heaven  and  earth  for  the  deposition  of  the  Shogun. 

We  learned  much  about  the  intrigues  that  were  going  on  at 
Kioto,  plots  and  counterplots  of  which  the  interest  has  long  since 
faded  away  owing  to  the  very  greatness  of  the  results  which  have 
issued  from  them.  The  men  themselves  who  kept  us  so  well  in- 
formed have  almost  all,  one  by  one,  been  gathered  to  their  fathers 
Komatsu  of  the  Satsuma  clan,  whom  we  saw  almost  daily  during 
VOL.  i  25* 


388  Memories 

our  stay  in  Osaka,  Prince  Ito  of  the  Choshiu  clan,  Kido  of  the 
same  clan,  the  most  brilliant  of  all — Goto  of  Tosa  whose  statue 
stands  in  Tokio,  Nakai,  and  others  all  gone  !  The  last  of  our 
special  friends,  Marquis  Inouy6,  one  of  the  elder  statesmen,  died 
a  month  since.  I  doubt  whether  there  can  be  six  men  alive  who 
played  a  leading  part  in  those  stirring  events.  And  during  the 
last  twelve  months  the  great  Mikado,  whose  reign  will  always 
be  so  famous,  and  the  Shogun  whom  he  magnanimously  forgave, 
have  themselves  gone  to  the  realm  of  shadows,  living  only  in 
history. 

We  had  to  be  very  careful  in  arranging  our  interviews,  for 
naturally  we  were  pretty  closely  watched  by  the  blessed  spies 
who  were  attached  to  us  "  for  our  protection."  Still  we  did  manage 
once  or  twice  to  escape  from  the  Argus-eyed  and  to  have  at  least 
two  interviews  from  which  even  the  less  important  men  of  the 
Daimio  party  were  shut  out. 

One  message  which  I  was  desired  to  give  to  Sir  Harry  Parkes 
was,  read  by  the  light  of  subsequent  events,  supremely  interesting. 
It  was  to  the  effect  that  the  object  of  the  Prince  of  Satsuma  and 
of  the  coalition  of  Daimios  was  not  to  upset  the  government  of 
the  Shogun,  but  to  prevent  it  from  making  a  bad  use  of  its  powers. 
That  Satsuma  hoped  to  see  the  Mikado  restored  to  the  ancient 
honours  of  his  race,  because  that  would  contribute  to  the  weal 
of  the  country ;  that  their  plans  and  hopes  all  tended  not  to  revolu- 
tion against  the  Shogun  but  to  the  benefit  of  the  country  at  large 
— that  if  Sir  Harry,  on  reaching  Osaka,  would  moot  the  question 
of  a  new  treaty  with  the  Mikado  direct,  the  Daimios  would  at  once 
give  their  adherence  to  the  proposal  and  flock  to  Kioto  to  carry 
out  this  great  work.  Let  Sir  Harry  help  them  to  this  very  small 
degree  and  they  would  answer  for  the  rest. 

Truly  a  modest  programme  ;  but  I'appetit  vient  en  mangeant  ; 
a  few  short  months  later  it  would  have  excited  ridicule. 

We  did  a  great  deal  of  shopping  during  our  stay  in  Osaka,  for, 
of  course,  we  wished  to  carry  away  some  of  the  mei-butsu,  special 
wares,  for  which  the  great  city  was  famous.  Lacquer,  quaint 
pipes  of  many  patterns,  fans,  and  brocade  were  temptations  not  to 
be  resisted.  Wherever  we  went  we  were  pursued  by  huge  crowds 


The  Shogun  or  Tycoon  389 

through  which  a  way  was  cleared  for  us  by  petty  officials,  armed 
only  with  the  Wakizashi  or  dirk,  who  kept  shouting  a  sort  of  crow- 
like  cry  of  Kan  !  Kan  !  But  the  mob,  friendly  but  very  persistent, 
was  not  to  be  shouted  away.  The  attraction  was  too  great. 

When,  after  having  fulfilled  our  mission  at  Osaka,  we  reached 
Yedo  we  found  that  a  tragedy  had  taken  place  hi  the  Legation 
during  our  absence.  There  were  a  good  many  men  who  were 
unable  to  get  over  the  constant  dread  of  murder  at  the  hands  of 
the  armed  swashbucklers  who  used  to  ruffle  along  the  streets  of 
Yedo,  scowling  at  the  hated  foreigners  and  sometimes  making  as 
though  they  would  draw  their  keen  heavy  swords,  to  deliver  that 
first  deadly  blow  which  would  cut  a  man  almost  from  shoulder 
to  waist — a  blow  so  well  known  that  we  were  advised  if  we  saw 
an  inch  of  steel  bared  to  shoot  the  ruffian  at  sight.  One  of  our 
young  student  interpreters  was  so  possessed  by  the  terror  which 
haunted  him  by  day  and  by  night  that  he  never  went  outside  the 
gates  of  the  Legation  and  even  petitioned  the  Chief  to  send  home 
for  a  couple  of  Armstrong  guns  for  our  better  protection,  though 
we  already  had  a  company  of  the  gth  and  our  mounted  escort. 

One  night  the  poor  fellow  could  stand  it  no  longer.  He  dined 
quietly  with  the  others  and  then  went  off  to  his  room.  Two  shots 
were  heard.  His  hand  must  have  trembled,  for  he  missed  himself 
with  the  first,  the  bullet  of  which  was  found  in  the  wall ;  the 
second  shot  was  fatal.  They  say  that  suicide  is  infectious  ;  within 
a  week  there  were  two  more  cases  in  Yokohama.  It  is  hard  to 
realize  nowadays  the  conditions  of  life  in  the  early  times  of  our 
intercourse  with  Japan.  For  nearly  four  years  I  never  wrote  a 
note  without  having  a  revolver  on  the  table,  and  never  went  to 
bed  without  a  Spencer  rifle  and  bayonet  at  my  hand.  Think  of 
that,  you  who  walk  through  the  streets  of  Yedo  and  Kioto,  swing- 
ing a  dandy  cane  with  as  great  safety  as  you  would  in  Regent 
Street  or  Piccadilly,  and  thank  your  stars  that  the  carrying  of 
sword  and  dirk  has  been  abolished  by  law. 

In  the  month  of  May,  1867,  Sir  Harry  Parkes  and  the  rest  of 
us  went  to  Osaka  for  the  first  reception  by  the  Shogun. 

The  Castle  of  Osaka  was,  and  still  is,  so  far  as  its  outer  fortress 
is  concerned,  a  most  stupendous  monument  of  feudalism,  the 


39°  Memories 

crowning  glory  of  Hideyoshi,  commonly  spoken  of  as  Taiko  Sama, 
the  son  of  a  woodcutter  in  the  province  of  Owari,  who,  towards  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  became  the  supreme  de  facto  ruler 
of  Japan  and  the  conquerer  of  Corea.  Its  walls,  "  seven  fathoms 
thick,"  as  old  Kampfer  puts  it,  were  built  of  great  blocks  of  granite 
piled  irregularly  one  above  the  other  without  mortar  in  cyclopean 
pattern  or  rather  no  pattern,  massive,  wonder-raising.  Walls 
moated  by  two  rivers,  the  Yodo  and  the  Kashiwari.  Some  of 
the  stones  are  more  than  thirty  feet  long  and  nearly  twenty  feet 
high,  sent,  as  it  is  said,  by  way  of  tribute  by  the  lords  of  many 
provinces.  It  is  a  noble  structure,  moated,  very  plain  and  simple, 
featureless  with  the  exception  of  the  curved  roofs  of  the  great  towers, 
its  very  simplicity  adding  to  its  grandeur  ;  against  a  host  armed 
with  bows  and  spears,  with  perhaps  a  few  matchlocks,  an  im- 
pregnable fortress.  Here  Hideyori,  the  son  of  Hideyoshi,  was 
born,  and  here  he  lived  with  his  mother,  a  woman  of  great  char- 
acter, in  full  security,  and  for  a  while  in  friendship  with  lyeyasu. 
The  end  of  that  friendship  and  the  fall  of  the  castle  of  Osaka  rank 
among  the  romances  of  history. 

Over  and  over  again  the  great  stronghold  was  attacked  by  the 
Tokugawa  ;  twice  it  was  nearly  lost  by  treachery — but  the  garri- 
son always  beat  off  their  assailants,  until  at  last  a  fire  broke  out 
within  the  castle  and  there  was  a  panic.  Hideyori  and  his  glori- 
ously brave  mother  were  never  seen  again :  they  must  have 
perished  in  the  flames;  and  lyeyasu  triumphed  only  to  die  some 
months  afterwards  from  the  effects  of  a  wound  received  during 
the  siege.  After  his  death  he  was  deified,  or  perhaps  I  should 
rather  say  canonized,  as  an  incarnation  of  Buddha  under  the  title 
of  Gongen  Sama. 

It  was  in  this  great  historic  castle  that  our  reception  by  the 
Shogun  took  place.  Never  can  anything  of  the  kind  be  seen 
again.  The  Shogunate  has  disappeared  and  is  now  only  spoken 
of  in  Japan  as  something  prehistoric  ;  the  last  of  the  Shoguns 
died  a  few  months  ago  ;  the  castle  itself  no  longer  exists  as  it  then 
was.  The  outer  shell  still  stands  but  the  magnificent  palace  which 
it  contained  was  gutted  and  burnt  by  the  Shogun's  own  people 
when,  after  the  battle  of  Fushimi  they  came  back  in  bitter  despair 


The  Shogun  or  Tycoon  391 

aching  with  the  pain  of  defeat,  and  many  of  them  stung  to  the  quick 
by  the  flight  of  their  lord. 

How  cruelly  this  sorrow  ate  into  the  hearts  of  the  faithful 
retainers  and  adherents  of  the  great  House  of  Tokugawa  may  be 
felt  from  the  following  true  story.  I  am  anticipating  by  a  year, 
but  I  am  not  writing  a  consecutive  history  ;  only  jotting  down 
stray  notes  of  a  sort  of  "  voyage  en  zigzag  "  across  my  memory. 
When  the  defeated  Shogun  reached  Yedo  and  was  safely  lodged 
(for  a  short  while  !)  in  his  ancestral  castle,  a  member  of  his  second 
Council,  one  Hori  Kura  no  Kami,  went  to  him  and  urged  him  to 
perform  hara-kiri  as  the  only  way  to  wipe  out  the  stain  which  had 
smirched  the  august  Family  To  prove  his  sincerity  he  declared 
himself  ready  to  do  the  same.  The  Shogun  is  reported  to  have 
laughed  at  him,  saying  that  such  barbarous  customs  were  out  of 
date.  Upon  this  Hori  Kura  no  Kami  prostrated  himself,  making 
due  obeisances  and  retiring  to  an  adjoining  chamber,  stripped  to 
the  waist,  drew  his  dirk,  and  plunging  it  into  himself  died  the 
death  of  a  noble  samurai. 

Tokugawa  Keiki  was  wrong  when  he  said  that  hara-kiri  was 
out  of  date  as  a  barbarous  custom.  It  is  to  this  day  the  end  of 
constancy  and  honour  ;  witness  the  death  of  the  great  Satsuma 
General  Saigo,  whom  I  knew  well,  in  the  rebellion  of  1877  ;  witness 
the  self-immolation  of  my  gallant  old  friend,  General  Nogi,  the 
hero  of  Port  Arthur,  two  years  ago  (in  1913)  ;  broken  by  grief 
at  the  death  of  the  Mikado  Mutsu  Hito  he  would  not  outlive  the 
master  whom  he  loved,  and  so  he  died,  and  that  faithful  lady  his 
wife  died  with  him. 

During  our  stay  at  Osaka  we  had  three  interviews  with  the 
Shogun  ;  of  these  the  first  was  naturally  the  most  interesting, 
although  it  was  only  semi-official,  for  not  only  had  it  the  taste  of 
novelty,  but  it  also  afforded  the  opportunity  for  a  more  intimate 
interchange  of  ideas  than  would  be  possible  on  a  state  occasion. 
Accompanied  by  a  number  of  dignitaries  of  the  Shogun's  govern- 
ment and  escorted  not  only  by  our  own  men,  seventeen  splendid 
Lancers  picked  from  the  Metropolitan  Police,  and  a  company  of 
the  gth  Regiment,  but  also  by  a  small  army  of  Japanese  soldiers, 
we  rode  to  the  castle  in  solemn  procession.  We  were  privileged 


92  Memories 

to  remain  on  horseback  beyond  the  place  where  all  Japanese,  high 
and  low,  were  required  to  dismount,  and  only  left  our  horses  at 
an  inner  gate,  immediately  opposite  the  enormous  hall  of  the 
palace,  which  was,  indeed,  an  inner  castle  surrounded,  as  was  the 
outer  one,  by  a  moat.  Here  we  were  received  by  a  number  of 
officials  of  high  rank,  who  led  us  to  a  waiting-room  where  tea  and 
various  dainties  were  served.  I  take  the  account  of  our  reception 
from  a  letter  which  I  wrote  at  the  time,  on  May  the  6th,  1867. 

The  interior  of  the  palace  was  far  more  magnificent  than  any- 
thing that  I  had  seen  in  Japan.  The  walls  were  covered  with  gold 
leaf,  decorated  with  those  glorious  paintings  of  trees,  flowers,  birds 
and  beasts,  for  which  the  Kano  school  of  artists  is  famous.  The 
hangings  were  the  finest  rush  mats,  suspended  by  gilt  hooks  from 
which  hung  huge  silken  tassels  in  tricolour — orange,  red  and  black — 
the  colours  of  the  Zingari  ribbon.  The  upper  panels  formed  a 
frieze,  deeply  carved  by  some  native  Grinling  Gibbons  in  the  highest 
style  of  Japanese  art,  lavishly  gilt  and  painted  ;  every  panel  was 
different,  no  two  alike.  Peacocks  and  cranes  strutting  in  all  the 
pride  of  beauty,  delicate  groups  of  tender-coloured  azaleas,  bamboos 
bending  their  graceful  feathers  to  the  wind,  pine  trees  with  foliage 
almost  black  with  age,  were  the  subjects  chosen.  The  uprights 
and  cross-beams  were  of  plain  unpolished  keaki  wood,  fastened 
with  metal  bolts,  capped  with  niello  work.  The  ceiling  was  coffered 
in  squares,  carved,  gilt  and  painted,  and  the  divisions  were  richly 
lacquered  in  black  and  gold.  Sumptuous  as  it  all  was  there  was 
nothing  tawdry  or  glaring  in  this  fever  of  splendour,  for  it  was  all 
two  hundred  years  old,  softened  and  subdued  by  the  patina  of  time. 

If  old  Kampfer's  account,  or  rather,  the  story  told  by  his  in- 
formant, was  correct,  there  once  stood  inside  the  palace  precincts 
a  tower  "  several  stories  high,  whose  innermost  roof  is  covered 
and  adorned  with  two  monstrous  large  fish,  which,  instead  of 
scales,  are  covered  with  golden  obang,  finely  polished,  which,  on  a 
clear,  sunshiny  day  reflect  the  rays  so  strongly  that  they  may  be 
seen  as  far  as  Hiogo.  This  tower  was  burned  down  about  thirty 
years  ago,  to  compute  from  1691."  These  monstrous  fishes  were 
examples  of  the  mystic  Shachihoko,  which  are  seen  on  so  many 
roofs,  and  the  obang  was  the  great  oval  gold  coin,  some  five  or 


The  Shogun  or  Tycoon  393 

six  inches  long,  flat  like  a  scale,  which  must  have  made  a  rare  jacket 
for  a  fish. 

We  were  kept  some  little  time  in  the  first  room  talking  with 
the  various  dignitaries,  as  is  natural  in  every  land,  about  the 
weather,  and  then  we  were  led  into  the  reception  hall,  where,  in 
deference  to  European  habits,  a  table  was  set  out  with  eight  seats, 
and  at  one  end  a  richly  lacquered  chair  for  the  Shogun.  Here  we 
were  met  by  the  Gorojiu  (the  Council  of  State,  literally  "  Elders  "), 
and  the  members  of  the  Second  Council,  and  were  told  that  the 
great  Prince  would  immediately  make  his  appearance. 

A  few  seconds  afterwards  two  of  the  tall  sliding  screens  which 
wall  a  Japanese  room  were  slowly  and  noiselessly  drawn  aside, 
and  that  long-drawn  "  hush  "  caused  by  the  drawing-in  of  breath 
which  announces  the  coming  of  a  great  personage  thrilled  all 
through  the  whole  palace  like  the  most  delicate  pianissimo  of  a 
huge  orchestra  ;  for  a  second  or  two  the  Tycoon,  motionless  as  a 
statue,  stood  framed  in  the  opening  between  the  screens,  an 
august  and  imposing  figure.  All  the  Japanese  prostrated  them- 
selves, with  the  exception  of  the  Gordjiu  and  the  members  of  the 
Second  Council,  who,  presumably,  only  were  excused  this  reverence 
in  order  that  there  might  be  no  difference  between  them  and  us. 
The  great  man  stepped  into  the  room,  bowed,  shook  hands  with 
Sir  Harry  Parkes  "  in  barbarum,"  as  Tacitus  puts  it,  and  we  all 
sat  down — four  Japanese  on  one  side  of  the  table,  Sir  Harry,  Mr. 
Locock,  Mr.  Satow  and  myself  on  the  other.  Then  the  Shogun 
rose  very  gracefully  and  asked  after  the  health  of  Queen  Victoria. 
This  was  responded  to  by  Sir  Harry  standing  and  inquiring  after 
the  Mikado.  He  then  led  the  conversation  into  business  questions. 

The  great  man,  in  the  course  of  this  unofficial  and  more  or  less 
confidential  talk,  showed  that  he  was  well  posted  as  to  all  that 
had  taken  place  during  the  early  days  after  the  signing  of  the 
Elgin  Treaty  and  up  to  the  then  present  time.  He  spoke  frankly 
and  without  reserve  of  the  troublous  years  that  we  had  gone 
through.  He  deplored  the  difficulties  which  had  stood  in  the  way 
of  any  satisfactory  intercourse  between  his  countrymen  and  ours, 
and  announced  his  determination  to  inaugurate  a  better  order  of 
things.  His  manner  was  quite  charming.  He  was  at  first,  not 


394  Memories 

unnaturally,  a  little  shy  and  nervous,  for  he  had  some  awkward 
admissions  to  make,  but  his  great  natural  distinction  and  kindly 
courtesy  soon  shook  off  all  restraint,  and  he  talked  freely  and  easily. 

Certainly  Prince  Tokugawa  Keiki,  the  last  of  the  Shoguns,  was 
a  very  striking  personality.  He  was  of  average  Japanese  height, 
small  as  compared  with  Europeans,  but  the  old  Japanese  robes 
made  the  difference  less  apparent.  I  think  he  was  the  handsomest 
man,  according  to  our  ideas,  that  I  saw  during  all  the  years  that  I 
was  in  Japan.  His  features  were  regular,  his  eye  brilliantly  lighted 
and  keen,  his  complexion  a  clear,  healthy  olive  colour.  The  mouth 
was  very  firm,  but  his  expression  when  he  smiled  was  gentle  and 
singularly  winning.  His  frame  was  well-knit  and  strong,  the 
figure  of  a  man  of  great  activity  ;  an  indefatigable  horseman,  as 
inured  to  weather  as  an  English  master  of  hounds.  When  I  saw 
him  again  forty  years  later  age  had  altered  him  but  little.  He 
had  retained  all  his  charm  of  manner,  and  though  the  face  was 
lined  his  features  had  undergone  hardly  any  change,  and  the 
distinction  of  race  was  as  evident  as  ever.  He  was  a  great  noble 
if  ever  there  was  one.  The  pity  of  it  was  that  he  was  an 
anachronism. 

After  about  an*  hour  spent  in  very  friendly  conversation  the 
Shogun  asked  to  see  our  escort,  who  were  waiting  in  an 
inner  court  of  the  palace.  They  showed  him  lance  and  sword 
exercise,  with  which  he  seemed  highly  delighted,  but  what  inte- 
rested him  the  most  was  the  size  of  our  horses,  Gulf  Arabs,  rather 
a  good-looking  lot  which  we  had  imported  from  India,  and  he,  as 
a  horse-lover,  commented  a  good  deal  upon  their  superiority  to 
the  Japanese  native  ponies,  which  certainly  are  about  as  mean 
a  breed  of  the  genus  horse  as  exists  anywhere. 

The  Shogun  had  invited  us  to  stay  for  dinner.  In  these  days 
(1915)  a  banquet  served  in  the  French  fashion  in  the  palace  of  a 
Japanese  grandee  is  an  everyday  affair,  but  at  the  time  of  which 
I  am  writing  for  four  Englishmen  to  find  themselves  hobnobbing 
with  the  Tycoon  and  his  Gorojiu  was  an  unprecedented  occurrence, 
impossible  anywhere  out  of  dreamland.  The  great  man  presided, 
and  we  were  waited  upon  by  the  Ministers  of  Foreign  Affairs  and 
the  pages  of  honour.  In  the  middle  of  dinner  the  Shogun  rose  and 


The  Shogun  or  Tycoon  395 

proposed  the  Queen's  health,  a  compliment  till  then  absolutely 
unknown  in  the  Land  of  Sunrise,  and  therefore  all  the  more  in- 
dicative of  the  desire  to  please.  Sir  Harry  responded  with  a  toast 
in  honour  of  our  host.  After  dinner  we  adjourned  into  an 
inner  room  where  the  Shogun  gave  each  of  us  a  present  of  two 
pieces  of  crape,  and  a  pipe  and  tobacco-pouch  of  silk  embroidered 
by  the  ladies  of  the  palace. 

But  the  prettiest  compliment,  so  gracefully  offered,  was  yet  to 
come.  The  room  in  which  we  were  was  hung  round  with  a  number 
of  portraits  of  poets  and  poetesses  which  had  been  presented  to 
one  of  the  Tokugawa  Shoguns  by  some  Daimio  about  two  hundred 
years  before.  We  were  looking  at  these  with  no  little  curiosity 
when  the  Tycoon  insisted  on  having  one  of  them  taken  down  and 
presenting  it  to  Sir  Harry  in  memory  of  his  visit.  Sir  Harry 
naturally  demurred  to  accepting  it,  pointing  out  what  a  pity  it 
would  be  to  break  the  set ,  but  the  Prince  would  take  no  denial, 
saying  that  "  when  he  looked  on  the  vacant  space  it  would  give  him 
pleasure  to  think  that  the  picture  that  had  once  filled  it  was  in 
the  possession  of  the  British  Minister."  Could  courtesy  find  a 
higher  expression  ? 

We  remained  at  the  palace  till  past  nine  o'clock  and  it  was  a 
satisfaction  to  hear  next  day  that  the  occasion  of  his  first  intro- 
duction to  Englishmen  had  afforded  our  princely  host  as  much 
pleasure  as  it  had  given  us. 

The  State  ceremony  was,  of  course,  far  more  stiff  and  formal, 
but  it  was  also  infinitely  more  quaint,  for  there  was  no  taste  of 
Europe  about  it.  We  were  living  through  a  chapter,  or  perhaps 
I  should  rather  say  a  paragraph  of  a  chapter,  taken  out  of  the  old- 
world  romance  of  the  furthest  East.  The  Shogun  and  his  nobles 
were  clad  in  the  immemorial  Court  dress  ;  flowing  trousers  as  long 
as  the  train  of  a  Buckingham  Palace  great  lady,  loose  hempen 
jackets,  and  the  curious  little  black  lacquer  caps  like  boxes  (yeboshi) 
on  their  heads.  You  may  see  them  portrayed  on  golden  screens 
and  old  paintings.  In  no  country  that  I  have  seen  is  Court  dress 
triumphant  in  beauty,  but  here  it  was  absolutely  grotesque,  forcing 
the  wearers  into  the  most  ungraceful  shuffling  movements.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  we  seemed  equally  absurd  to  our  hosts,  for 


396  Memories 

the  cocked  hat,  now  the  coveted  privilege  of  every  Japanese 
official,  was  then  a  mystery  unknown  as  the  future  which  has 
given  birth  to  it. 

On  the  following  day  the  Shogun  returned  to  Kioto  for  a  meet- 
ing of  Daimios  whom  he  had  summoned  to  confer  upon  the  affairs 
of  the  Empire.  Meanwhile  our  negotiations  had  gone  smoothly  ; 
the  great  man  had  shown  himself  to  be  most  friendly,  and  we 
were  in  high  hopes  that  the  opening  of  Osaka  in  the  following 
January  would  be  the  harbinger  of  new  and  happier  relations 
between  Japan  and  the  Western  world. 

There  was  a  talk  of  my  being  removed  from  Japan  at  this  time. 
I  was  very  unwilling  to  leave  the  country  at  so  interesting  a 
moment.  In  a  letter  written  home  I  find  the  reason  of  my  re- 
luctance. "If  I  go  I  shall  miss  the  opening  of  Osaka  and  Hiogo 
to  foreign  trade  which  will  be  the  last  event  of  political  importance 
in^ Japan  in  our  time."  What  a  blind  prophet !  I  stayed  on, 
but  I  was  fated  to  see  a  good  many  events  of  greater  "  political 
importance  "  than  the  opening  of  the  two  ports. 


END   OF  VOLUME   I 


pfinttd  at  The  Chapel  River  Press,  Kingston,  Surrey. 


lIUlll Hi' «"' "  /•*  j     "7  C  "1  7 


